Ajanta, Ellora June 20, 2005
By admin at 20 September, 2007, 10:31 am
Ajanta and Ellora
Ajanta and Ellora are awesome places. I was awed by how they looked exactly like the pictures on my 8th standard History textbooks.
I was amazed at how Ajanta and Ellora (esp Ajanta) are maintained, preserved deserving of its World Heritage Site status. Ajanta is spick, span, clean, devoid of plastic. Its truly amazing what a Government (appointed/elected) can do.
The difference can be seen when one arrives at Ajanta. There is a huge parking space for Cars, Buses. You walk up the hill, and hit a flurry of shops (architecturally conceived and designed, no eye-sore) selling everything from souvenirs to vada-pav. And the interaction with pollution-causing artefacts ends here. You walk up further, you hit the Bus Bay, where the bus service operated by MTDC takes one into Ajanta. This is the only entry mechanism into Ajanta, with purposes two-fold.
* revenue, from ticket sales
* reduced pollution per passenger
And inside Ajanta, each of the caves is masterfully/painstakingly restored by Chemology experts of the ASI and one can see the difference in the frescos. The colours of those restored are vivid, bright and fresh. The guide there said that it takes a pretty long time for restoration. And the guides, one should appreciate the amount of knowledge they have about the place, its history, the culture. Our guide could relate incidents from Ramayan, Mahabharat, Bhagavad Gita, Jesus Christ, Hinayana, Mahayana, Chinese culture, Japanese and what not, and it enhanced our experience of the place and helped us understand and appreciate the place better.
Ajanta was a great experience for us. It was refreshing to see that some thought (from the Government) had gone into designing amenities
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