A Visit to Kailasa Temple at Ellora Caves
Being an Indian and that to staying in Maharashtra, you always get attracted towards many tourist places. I would name few of them – Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani, Matheran, Ajanta and Ellora caves, many forts etc. etc. This doesn’t mean that, if you are a Maharashtrian, you must see these places before trying to visit rest of the world. But, if you get a chance, definitely visit these places. I also got a chance to visit Ellora caves. As my usual habit, I shared this with my friends, and they gave me the most freely available thing i.e. advice on what to see there. But, sometimes you have to be little intelligent to extract the required information from the ocean of information (it is similar to searching on Google). I applied the commonality principle and finalized to visit at least the 16th Cave – the Kailasa Temple.
First of all this name Kailasa is related to few things – Hinduism, God Shiva and for me Himalaya and lots and lots of snow. Don’t keep last relation in mind as you are in the most hot area of Maharashtra when you are in Ellora caves. Somebody had already given me information that there are 34 caves at Ellora, out of which there are 17 Hindu caves, 12 Buddist and 5 Jain caves. I could find no use of this information except that now I would expecting work related only one religion in cave of that religion. In the same lines, Kailasa falls under Hindu religion and I expected work related to Hindu mythology to be there. (Here is room for you to check your knowledge about Hindu – mythology, Gods, Epics, big wars etc.).
A day prior to Ellora, I had visited Ajanta caves. But after coming to Ellora, I was very much relieved, because there was no restriction on photography. At Ajanta, there are paintings and NOW there is an official attempt being made to preserve (the remains) those paintings. Hence, they don’t allow any ‘flash’ photography at Ajanta (mind you this includes photography you do by using stands, increasing exposure and switching off flash – sorry for being bit technical). I took it as an opportunity, but there is always another trouble at these sites, you have too many people around, hence it is difficult to take a photograph without somebody’s head, hand, leg or if you are lucky, the whole person intruding in your well framed photograph. To solve this problem, I will just say – Good Luck! Or wait, wait and just wait.
These caves were constructed in 500 A.D. and 1000 A.D. Because of this, it is not possible to find the real rational behind construction of these caves. But, you take a lot of pain to reach to such places, and mostly you are thinking that I am not going to come back to see these again, hence it is better to take a guide, who tells you some history behind each carving. Else you are left with your imagination and your knowledge of Hindu mythology in stones of Ellora caves. At such places, you will find guides who speak blended version of English, which is blend of local language or Hindi and English with ‘the’ mixed after every three words. By this they ensure that, those who understand local language very well, and those who understand English very well, both don’t understand 50% of his narration. But I admire their effort towards catching the English words (without any official education) and presenting it. Fortunately, we (I had few friends with me) found a guide who could speak fluent English. And after couple of rounds of negotiations we managed to settle a deal.
His narration was so good and exiting that it reminded me a previous such energetic narration at Tower of London by the so called ‘beef-eaters’. With his explanation, I could make out the meaning and importance of the sculptures, idols, and stone carvings. He showed us two carvings, take this thing from me that if you don’t have prior information, then there is no chance that you will find out that those carvings are actually Ramayana and Mahabharata events. You can see the Nandi Mandap, main Shiva Temple, huge Elephant carvings as if they are holding up the entire temple. Also, the guide told us that the temple was carved in single stone and the approach was top down (I haven’t verified truth in this information). You can imagine the amount of rock that must have been removed in carving of the cave, and how long it must have taken (at least 100 years) to do the carvings with the kind of tools available then.
Somebody had told us that there will be monkeys, which will trouble you. But I could find no trouble, may be because we had no eatable in our hands and most importantly we were behaving like humans and not like our ancestors’.
Finally, Some information you may think valuable – Ellora caves are around 30 km from Aurangabad city and the contents are at least enough to spend half a day to a day. There is good transport available from the city. There are few Indian snacks joints available to soothe your taste buds. Some people also recommend that the Kailasa cave is west facing hence it is good to visit in afternoon as there will be enough light. I would recommend, just check opening hours and visit when there is good sunlight, so that you can see things better through eyes and in photographs as well. Otherwise it appears dark.
In short, Ellora caves and especially the Kailasa Temple are very beautiful, and these are a wonderful examples of Indian history and architecture.
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