Today I got to see the number one place I wanted to visit in India: Ellora Caves. An interesting hillside of 34 artificial Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist caves. Some had two stories, some had three. Some were huge with maybe 50 columns holding rooms up. Most carved out walls of bigger than life size deities. In some rooms you can see traces of plaster that covered walls and ceilings filled with paintings.
Some were carved from the top down, creating a building out of essentially one stone. The biggest monolithic stone temple in the world is here too. I couldn’t find any numbers, but it looks about 100 feet tall. The sign said it took over 200 years to cut.
It took about five hours to walk to all the caves and explore them all. I could hear and smell bats in many. One person pointed his flashlight up and I saw hundreds of bats on the ceiling of one cave.