holiday plan: Aurangabad Ajanta and Ellora Caves

The ajanta caves in aurangabad district of maharashtra state of india are about 30 rock-cut buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century.

The caves include paintings and rock cut sculptures described as among the finest surviving examples of ancient indian art, particularly expressive paintings that present emotion through gesture, pose and form.

ajanta caves:-

The ajanta caves constitute ancient monasteries and worship halls of different buddhist traditions carved into a 250 feet wall of rock, caves also present paintings depicting the past lives and rebirths of the buddha, pictorial tales from aryasura's jatakamala, as well as rock-cut sculptures of buddhist deities in vogue between the 2nd century.

Rock art:-

Textual records suggest that these caves served as a monsoon retreat for monks, as well as a resting site for merchants and pilgrims in ancient india.

while vivid colors and mural wall painting were abundant in indian history as evidenced by historical records , ajanta form the largest corpus of surviving ancient indian wall-painting,The ajanta caves site are mentioned in the memoirs of several medieval era chinese buddhist travelers to india and by a mughal era official of akbar era in early 17th century,they were covered by jungle until accidentally "discovered" and brought to the western attention in 1819 by a colonial british officer on a tiger hunting party.

The ajanta caves are located on the side of a rocky cliff that is on the north side of a u-shaped gorge on the small river waghur, round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

with the ellora caves, ajanta is the major tourist attraction of the marathwada region of maharashtra. they are about 60 kilometres from bhusaval junction railway station, 104 kilometres from the city of aurangabad.

Map of Ajanta Caves:-