Merry Christmas everyone!

We had a relaxing evening at our hotel. Karen & I played scrabble by the pool while Dale went swimming. The pools here are solar heated and a little chilly for my liking. I am also avoiding swimming because my legs are entirely bitten by mosquitoes or something nasty. I got bit on our second day here and had a very negative reaction to the bites. They are really itchy. the mosquitoes here are very little and don’t make that familiar buzzing sound to warn you that they are around. We may also have been bitten by sand fleas – no way to know. We found that an Ayurveda cream made of Neem and Aloe Vera was the only thing that would help. We saw the Neem tree at Ellora and learned that it is used in many different medicines and, in addition to skin related concerns; it is also used to purify your blood if you drink some. I am happy to have found it.The big tree is the Neem tree.

The smaller tree is the Acacia tree that is very common here. Our niece Haley’s middle name is Acacia so we took this picture in her honour.

the three looms produce three different products. the orange one at the top is the simplest, the bottom one is the most complex. The middle one is the cheapest because  only the panel you see is woven, the rest of the sari is plain. The bottom one is complex because the pattern keeps being repeated in the border and the actual sari itself.

the same pattern is produced in 3 different levels of detail.

These pilgrims were walking from Aurangabad to somewhere about 200 km up the road. We noticed them on the way up and on the way back. They just walk and chant. They were all happy and friendly when we stopped to take pictures. they covered about 35 km in the day. they don’t take any supplies with them and rely upon others to take care of them – and it works.

We had a very early start today. We were on our way to the Mumbai airport at 4 am for our 6:30 flight. We arrived in Aurangabad (Aurangzeb’s city) at 8:30 am and our guide picked us up and transported us to our hotel – a virtual palace of a place. After dropping our gear, we were off on our two hour drive to the Ajanta Caves. We were initially concerned about being anything but comatose after such an early start, but the caves were fascinating. They were more appropriately called carved mountains than caves because the Buddhist monks living there between 2AD and 6 BC carved the temples and monasteries out of solid rock, creating the caves. Our guide was brilliant. He has been guiding people through the monument for the past 42 years! He knew everything about the caves and was still passionate about making sure we understood the significance of the caves.

Our travels to and from the UNESCO World heritage site were delayed a couple of seconds because we had to wait for ox carts to move off the road. It is staggering to note that people still use ox carts, live in huts and walk miles for water. This is the reality for many of the people living in and around Arangabad. The poverty here is obvious. However, for many of the people we encountered, it was “just life” and they were accepting of how life was. We saw migrant worker “villages” filled with tarp-tents. A whole family would live in the tent while picking whatever was being harvested. The crops around here included sorgum, sugar cane, lentils, wheat, ginger, fruit, castor, red chilli peppers and cotton. They use oxen to transport their goods to and from the field.

We ended our day at a weaving school. The weavers there use three different types of looms. The first loom they showed us was based on 2000-year-old traditions of tapestry with silk threads. It takes one weaver over two years to make one Sari using this technique. The people of the Aurangabad area are some of the originators of loom weaving in the world and the school is trying to preserve the traditional weaving techniques. The second loom technique they showed us was mechanized but on a 600 year old style of loom. An early computer helped speed up the weaving process. The third loom was only 300-year-old technology. It used a punch-card system that resembled the computers of the 1980’s. The two looms would automatically pick up specific warp threads so the shuttle could weave the pattern. We ended up buying a whole swack of goods and enjoyed the whole process.

Our afternoon was spent on a city tour. We first stopped at a laundry where men do all the work! They have concrete tubs and piped in water that is then used to wash hotel linens, restaurant cloths and people’s clothes. The men beat the cloths against the cement after letting them soak in soapy water. Then they rinse them and hang them to dry. We then stopped briefly at the University of Mumbai to look at the exterior of these beautiful buildings. The train station was close by. 1700 trains go through the Mumbai train station every day. Each train is designed to carry 1007 people but they typically fit 4500 people on the trains. The cars are segregated by gender so that women are squished with women and men are squished with men.

Harry Potter Anyone? 

The Train Station of Mumbai

Now for a relaxing evening with Meenal’s brother and his family and life is good. Our last stop of the afternoon was a museum built to honour Ghandi. He stayed in the house where the museum was located every time he was in Mumbai. Ghandi also started some of his most important campaigns from this house. It was interesting!

We had lunch in a wonderful restaurant. It was the Indian equivalent of dim sum. They started by asking us what level of heat we would like our food to be. That determined which cuisine we would be served. We were each given several small bowls on a large tray. The waiters then came around and filled the bowls with different stews or sauces. We were given several different types of bread and pickles to go with the food. It was vegetarian which was important because meat would have filled us up way before we could have tried as many different things as we could. There was even dessert! I don’t have a sweet tooth, but Dale does, so life was good. 

Well the world didn’t end today so we decided to have a great day of touring. We got up at the crack of dawn, had breakfast and hit the trail. Our first stop was the harbour where we took an hour-long ride on a local shuttle to the Elephant Caves. They were amazing. In the 4^th-6^th century, the people of the island carved these caves out of the mountain. There were approx. 9 different panels dedicated to different aspects of Shiva’s life. The Hindu’s learned the carving techniques from the Buddhists who carved some caves we will see probably tomorrow. The Hindu people were used to worshiping in temples with columns to hold up the roof, so the carvers carved the pillars from solid stone to make the temple look familiar. In 1543 the Portuguese traders decided to use the caves as targets for their canons and severely damaged all the panels. The one exception was the massive three-headed sculpture of Shiva because it had been hidden by a screen and not visible from the gun ships. 2000 people live on the island with the statues and manage all the stalls and food stands on the island. There is also a small train to take people from the boats to the monument steps. You have to walk up 120 steps to get to the top with people trying to sell stuff to you all the way. If you can’t walk up the stairs, people put you on a chair with carrying poles and carry you up the stairs. It was a bit weird to have four men carrying a seated woman come at us, but we stepped aside and let her pass. There were little monkeys hanging around the entrance to the caves so we stopped to watch them groom each other.