Ajanta caves

On the second day our driver came at 7:00 to get us - the ajanta caves are a 3 hour drive away.  We drove by a lot of lot of corn, sugar cane and cotton fields.  Using squatty potties is part of India :)

We saw a lot of water buffalo, oxen, cows, and a few camels :)  We drove through small roadside villages and again had wind in our hair :)
The ajanta caves have a lot more Paintings whereas the Ellora caves had more scultures. There were a few sculptures.

We took Zach's advice and went through the caves backwards and as a result we were much less of a tour attraction and we asked to have our picture taken much less often.  We enjoyed the peace and quiet - nature and actual wild flowers. We saw kids crabbing in the water.  These caves were all Buddist so we had to keep our shoes off most of the time. There were a lot of chipmunks around and we sang "spider pig" from the Simpson movie a lot and changed it to spider chipmunk :)  You can see him in the center completely vertical head first!

We ate at the state run restaurant and had some chicken fried rice and Megan and Andrea had a Fosters which was a treat because holidays in India are dry days and alcohol is not supposed to be available.  We went back down to the main area to meet the driver and the hawkers were horrible here!  We were so harrassed.  It puts a damper on the whole experience.

the drive back was really long.  The driver played Hindi music on the way back.  We took a nap and then watch some Hindi music videos and movies.  Oh my gosh - if you want a good giggle - watch hindi movies - so funny!!!
Zach and Nancy stayed at a budget hotel like us, but the other 7 stayed at the Lemon Tree - very fancy.  so we went over there Sunday night and sat by the pool and had dinner at the hotel restaurant - the food was amazing!! My friends had stocked up on alcohol because they knew two days were dry.  the hotel staff was upset they were drinking in public by the pool but were gracious enought to let them continue as long as they hid the bottles under the table and called in "juice" in public :)  It started raining so we went up to one of their hotel rooms and hung out.  It was fun to hang out with people I don't get to spend a lot of time with.  We had music and were singing and dancing.  It was nice to just relax...

Nancy, Zach and I were on an 8 am flight to Mumbai and the others weren't leaving until night.  The owned of my hotel drove me to the airport :)  this was our first official holiday and we had a blast!  I get to travel with Nancy, Zach and Andrea to Kerela at the end of October - looking forward to it!

http://ajantacaves.com/