Oh, Ellora.

Melissa had bought train tickets online for Aurangabad in the Maharashtra state. That city is a good stepping stone too Ellora and Ajanta, nearby sites of old temples from all sorts of faiths, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Melissa and three others originally going had been traveling every week for a while, and were too tired to go, so Miriam, Madeline, Ana, and I offered to take them. I didn’t know the three other girls that well, but I was eager to get to know them better, and you sure do get to know someone well when you travel with them. We left late Thursday night for the train station, and eventually located our train car and seats. Such a process is still a mystery to me, despite trying to figure the process out time and again. You never quite know at which platform a train is going to be, and understanding announcements that most people rely on for information is quite difficult.

The sleeper class is very fun to ride in. There are three levels of beds that fold out from the walls; you put them up and sit on the bottom bed during the day. We went to sleep early because of how late it already was, good thing I had brought a bed sheet which I folded both underneath me and over me. I used my backpack as a pillow, careful to keep it close to me not because I was worried about it getting stolen, but because the window at my head only had a few bars and no glass. What a sorry situation it would be if I accidentally knocked it out. I can’t remember exactly if I slept much, I was maybe in a daze most of the time, slightly waking up each time we stopped because of the automated jingles and announcements at each stop. The same lady’s voice was at each station. I must have actually gotten up at about 9 am and folded my bed up, excited to gaze out onto the farmlands we were riding through. We were travelling in the opposite direction we were the last night, and I was kindof confused as to how efficient a route we were taking. At one of the stops we got some samosas with salted green chilies and chai from a vender. We ate them while many people came to talk to us; I can’t remember any of their names though. I was most interested at the landscape though, we’d pass through villages and towns and all sorts of wide farmlands and pastures.

The scenery is different from what I’m used to in a very specific way: It has taken much more time to produce. I’m used to continually constructed and new areas by my school and home; even if there’s a wide open park, it’s new and somehow more artificial in some way, take newly planted grass for example. The grass I saw through has been there for ages. Unique cow routes have carved out delicate paths through the areas; homes, even if meager, are so intricate and arranged in such a way that could only be produced from years and years of being inhabited. I think any picture you take would have a unique and lengthy story to tell. That’s what it looked like.

We arrived at Aurangabad at 1:30; the trip had taken 15 ½ hours, much more than the 10 I was expecting; evidently the route indeed was less efficient than a straight line from city to city. The four of us decided to head to Ellora first, it was closer by and if we were to head to Ajanta and then be back to Aurangabad by Sunday, we needed to start in some direction soon. We took a rickshaw to the bus station; it was as busy as the train station and we weren’t sure what we were doing. Walking up to the ticket counter, the man at the desk through bars shouted at us *HI! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!* “…Ellora?” *AH! ELLORA! PLATFORM 8* …He was very helpful.

The bus ride was about 50 minutes and very bumpy, but I managed to sleep some anyway. Stepping off the bus, many venders approached us to sell guides and crystals from the nearby caves. It was a little overwhelming figuring out what to do, but we ended up going with a vender named Vijay to a nearby hotel; he claimed he could get us a good price on a room. The hotel was more a very meager motel, with only a few rooms. The price was right though, and we decided to take it.

That afternoon we ended up going with Vijay to a small temple that was adjacent to, but not a part of, the Ellora tours. The hike there was one of my favorite parts of the whole weekend. We made our way up and up, and eventually could see forever. Farmlands, dotted forests, and small tucked-away towns were spread out over a huge basin that was surrounded by a huge cupped mountain range, on which we were hiking. The temple we visited was right next to a stream/small river which Vijay claimed to be a tributary of the Ganga. After swimming and talking some, we headed back for dinner in town. Vijay recommended the special for the area: banana lassi.

Lassi is a yogurt drink, it is usually plain but also comes in flavors, like mango and evidently banana. It had pieces of banana in it as well as chunks of solid sugar that made it really sweet and was an interesting combination with the sour yogurt. Tart and stingingly sweet and…banana. A unique and delicious specialty it was. The hunks of sugar reminded me of the waffles I had last summer in Belgium which also had pieces of sugar in the batter; I guess chunks of sugar makes anything delicious. We also had paneer, palak, cashew, and malai kufta curries with roti. The food was pretty oily and VERY filling, and delicious all the same. It’s a great feeling to know how satisfied four people can be for only $12 dollars.

That night we went to the roof of our motel with Vijay and looked at the stars and surrounding town area. I was very glad we had met Vijay. Although we were cautious and didn’t quite know from the start what exactly his intensions were, it was evident that Vijay just likes having a good time by meeting people and showing them around. Money he claimed wasn’t as important to him as it was to the rest of his vender friends. Whether or not this was True, we all were having a nice time, and I greatly appreciated his seemingly genuine hospitality and many interesting stories of past tourists he had met.

The next day we were actually tourists and went around the Ellora caves. There are 30? or so, and it is the largest collection of inter-faith temples in the world, with temples affiliated with Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The temples are carved right into the mountainside which is why they’re called “caves.” They reminded me of the sand castles I make at the beach, starting with a packed mound of sand (mountain), and carving out designs (intricate temples) with a shovel (hammer and chisel). Ellora also boasts the largest carved monolithic structure in the world, the Kailas Hindu temple (having taken 7000 workers 150 years to complete). It’s carved right out of the mountain and takes at least an hour or two to see.

My favorite temple was one with a ceiling carved out like a cathedral. The interior was as big as one too, except there were no pews and there was a huge Buddha statue in the front. The acoustics of the temple were designed to be impeccable, allowing sound to resonate for ages before dying out. There was a loft in the back that was used specifically for chanters during Buddhist prayer long ago. During a moment when the temple was empty of people, I was all too excited to belt out my favorite choral songs, including select Christmas music favorites. It felt like Candlelight Carols at Muhlenberg almost, except I was facing a 50 foot Buddha.

Vijay took us in his car around to all the temples so we didn’t have to walk the whole day. Something I hadn’t expected were the photographs that people would insist on taking of us. Without having even met, Indians would approach you and giddily ask to have a photo taken with you, beside themselves with excitement and clamoring to see the digital image on the camera after the shot was taken. Yes we were celebrities. And I had no problem posing for anyone who would ask. To see how happy it made everyone made me giggle, plus I felt very important to boot. I guess people were just extra excited to see a foreigner? Whatever the reason, if it made everyone happy, I was glad to take a few seconds out of my day for a photo shoot.

That evening was an annual cow festival in the town of Ellora. Everyone there gets very excited about it; it consists of basically decorating a ton of cows with colors and dressing their horns with cloth and parading around the town. Unfortunately right when the festival began, it started to monsoon and people scurried their cows under roofs in a frenzy to prevent the colors from washing off. Mainly their attempts were futile, and I was glad we were in Vijay’s car, dry and not in agitated commotion like the town people on whose parade it was literally raining. Vijay was very disappointed, he had been looking forward to it for some time; it’s one of the highlights of Ellora and it was so coincidental that we ended up there during the festival not even knowing the day before what it was. That’s just the way the world (and in this case the whether) works though, you just can never tell exactly what’s going to happen.

That night we watched some movies in Vijay’s store and after a tasty dinner at the motel turned in early. The train back to Hyderabad left at 3:30 the next day, and we were planning on heading to a fort on the way back to Aurangabad. That morning I made it a point to get more banana lassi before we headed out, not knowing if I’d have the chance to taste it again. After chai and fried breakfast snacks, I thanked Vijay by browsing his store and purchasing some crystals and geodes that he had found in the mountains at prices that he was more than happy to discount. I also bought some ancient Moghul, Hindu, and Arab coins from Vijay’s friend who had found them by searching the surrounding area (without a metal detector) for years. After more goodbyes, we were off on the bus again.

The Daulatabad fort was huge and I liked it even better than the famous Golconda Fort of Hyderabad. It was also the most impregnable structure I’ve ever seen, not only having massive walls with many defenses that spanned a huge area, but a massive inner moat dug around a central mountain on which the safest area of the fort rested. The moat was dug right into the mountain which resulted in sheer cut vertical walls that were hundreds of feet high. The bridge over the moat lead right into the mountain face to a dark, carved passageway through the interior of the mountain right up to the top. The bridge angled down in the middle of the moat, necessitating steps across the whole thing. It angled down purposefully so that when an enemy approached, massive dams were opened and water was released to fill the moat up to a level to cover the bridge, rendering it impassable. An antiquated drawbridge. The hike up to the very top was very steep, and I was glad we had packed extra water bottles; I was sweating like crazy. The view at the top was phenomenal, like the one at Ellora but entirely panoramic, and you could see the entire area of the fort at the base of the mountain. We could hear the blare of music instruments and the beat of drums in the distance, originating from a far street of the town on which some festival was taking place.

It was about one o’clock when we started to head back down, savoring the view as much as we could. There were many more people who wanted to take pictures of us on the way back down, sometimes we’d stop and have a brief conversation, other times it would literally be a photo and then a goodbye, nice to “meet” you. At the bottom we also encountered a vender, Feroz, we had met earlier who was eager to take us to tea. I was out of money by that point, and kindof hungry anyway, so the pineapple juice and guava he bought us was a nice treat. After showing him pictures on my camera of family vacations at North Carolina, cathedrals in Europe, and my dorm room (fancy sights for someone who had lived in the same small town for his whole life), we realized it was already 2:45 and swiftly caught the bus heading back to Aurangabad. By the time we were at the station, it was already 3:15 and our train was leaving in 15 minutes. Crazily begging for an auto ride to the train station with the small amount of money we had left in our pockets, a driver reluctantly agreed and, despite our shouts of encouragement to go faster, proceeded to stop frequently to see if anyone else in the street was heading to the train station. More passengers would have made his trip more worthwhile. Anyway, we threw the money at him and bolted into the train station, at about 3:26, our stomachs tied in knots that we wouldn’t be able to locate the correct train. Asking energetically around, we were able to get help from some people who pointed us in the right direction (people can be so helpful, even helping you locate the car you’re supposed to be in according to the roster posted on the outside). We located our seats out of breath and relieved.

The train didn’t leave for another 15 minutes or so, I guess it was running on Indian time. The number of hands I shook on that trip back to Hyderabad was astronomical. Not only were all the surrounding people eager to meet us, but people would spot us from outside at stations and either have conversations with us through the barred windows or board the train to meet us, hopping off rapidly as the train would start to pull away or the conductor shooed them off. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic, people would pack themselves at times around us so tightly, I mean there’s not that much space on the train and it wasn’t like we were going to leave the train every time it stopped just to meet the people there. Fortunately (as I was still out of money) some of the friends I made were also eager to buy us chai, flavored milk, samosas, and other fried snacks.

I remember spending a lot of time with someone about my age who was getting an education in organic chemistry, hoping to work in a lab in the future. He was attending a school out of his native state being educated in a language medium that he was unfamiliar with, but I guess this is a common thing, every 100 km there’s another spoken language to cope with in India. This amounts to thousands of spoken languages and dialects in the country, although only twenty or so are recognized by the country as state languages. Talk about not being able to understand your professors, the accent isn’t only different but it’s in an entirely different language. Anyway, we found a piece of paper and a pen and quizzed each other on structure names and reactions including substitution, and my favorite, Diels-Alder. It was probably one of my funniest moments in India so far, I don’t know, just completely unbelievable that we were having conversations about organic chemistry on a train to Hyderabad. If you were one of my classmates at Muhlenberg with Dr. Russell last semester, you have to admit, it’s pretty hilarious.

Our trip had already been 8 hours or so by the time I decided to get to bed, but it of course felt like maybe only 2. After the busy day, I slept soundly until Miriam woke me up at 6 am at Lingampally train station, Hyderabad. Again the trip was almost 16 hours, but as painless as anything. Dreary eyed and stenchy, we made our way back to campus, just in time for 7 o’clock yoga and the start of Monday morning classes.