Ellora Caves

13th June.
We left Hampi on the 11th and have travelled about 650kms northwards since then reaching the Ellora Caves yesterday afternoon. Most of the trip was across the quite monotonous Deccan Plain the first day made worse as it was an arterial route between the capital of the IT Industry in India, Bangalore, and the major port of Mumbai. For 300kms it was a continuous row of trucks in both directions travelling at a 60kph maximum. It was very tiring weaving in and out of them. Fortunately the yesterday drive was off that route, not as many trucks by any means.
We spent the most of today at the Ellora Caves, a World Heritage Site made so to preserve the wonderful statues and reliefs in the 30 or so caves. Three religions are represented: Hindu, Buddhism and Jain. All have their different representations of their deities but the one that stands out is the Hindu Kailasa Temple. Twice the size of the Parthenon in Athens it took 7000 labourers over 150 years to quarry it out of solid rock. 200,000 tonnes of rock was removed making the temple the largest monolithic structure in the world. It was all so very impressive.