A little background on Ajanta from Wiki:
The Ajanta Caves ( in Maharashtra, India are 31 rock-cut cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BC. The caves include paintings and sculptures considered to be masterpieces of both Buddhist religious art (which depict the Jataka tales)[1] as well as frescos which are reminiscent of the Sigiriya paintings in Sri Lanka.[2] The caves were built in two phases starting around 200 BC, with the second group of caves built around 600 AD.
Sarah and I took an overnight train from Delhi, getting down at Jalgaon. A few interesting train incidents later (more on that to come!) we took an early morning bus, and arrived at Ajanta.
The landscape in Maharashtra is very arid and reminiscent of our time in Rajasthan...in the summer! That's right, leaving the relatively cool days of Delhi, Sarah and I were both surprised to be "greeted" by days that felt like they were in the high 90s. But the small degree of heat stroke was so worth it.
Decades of restoration later, they are a well deserved World Heritage Site.
The caves, and their sculptures, are all carved out of a single cliff, so in the photos below remember that it wasn't as if the caves were hollowed out and the sculptures brought in....it was all carved out of one massive rock...all 31 caves....now that's incentive not to mess up!
The caves are just breathtaking. The degree of carving is amazing on its own, but what really surprised me was the intricacy of the frescoes on the walls, and the fact that they had survived to some extent. One reason that the frescoes on the caves remain is that Ajanta was basically "forgotten" with the decline of Buddhism in the region. As the site was abandoned, trees and shrubs obscured it, and it became a home for bats (more on those as well!), birds, and...tigers! Yep, it wasn't until 1819 when a British commander on a tiger hunt rediscovered the caves.
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