Ellora Caves
August 24, 2010
Ironically, after my last couple of posts about classes at the Institute, I had two of the best classes so far. Friday night and Saturday morning were both backbend-focused and great! The teacher Friday night was a young man, with a solid understanding of the poses, a clear focus for the class and just generally a great teacher. He is obviously a true disciple of Mr. Iyengar and perhaps, as a non-family member, he has a bit more freedom to teach in his own voice. He was observant, clear and even funny. Saturday morning was with another young woman, a different one than usual. She may be another granddaughter, I am not sure, and while Mr. Iyengar was in the background giving instructions, the class was more fluid, focused and maybe even at moments, fun. We did drop-backs from Sirsasana – many times (like 6-8) but it was more effortless than the work earlier in the week. Saturday morning’s class reminded me the difference the teacher’s attitude can make in the students’ experience of the class — and yes, probably this student’s attitude was different, too! Either way, it was good to have these experiences to counter-balance the classes earlier that week.
Following the Saturday morning class, Oscar and I headed out of town to play tourist. Our destination, the Ellora caves, was a 5-hour drive from Pune. The drive, though, was definitely part of the great experience. We drove through a mostly flat, agricultural area to the hills where the caves are located. The farms we passed were mostly small, family operations where the land was worked by the families (women in brightly coloured saris and children working in the fields), plowed by teams of oxen (I only saw 2 tractors and one was almost the same age as my father’s which is an antique) and cows and goats peppered the landscape. In villages, women in fabulous saris carried silver containers stacked on their heads. Beautiful!
Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that I am seeing India in a very privileged way. I am driving around the countryside in an air-conditioned car, with a driver, staying in nice enough hotels, eating in recommended restaurants and visiting major tourist sites. I am romanticizing what I am seeing and the interpretations and impressions are coloured with that lens. That said, the poverty of the cities and that I see daily in Pune, seems mitigated in the countryside. There was poverty, for sure, the farms are small, I am sure the families barely survive, but even in the villages we passed there was colour, aliveness, warmth.
Oscar and I valiantly attempted to capture this in photographs. However, we were observing all this through the windows of our speeding, swerving, speeding, shifting, and, did I mention, speeding car. The driver was definitely on a mission to get us to Ellora and then back again. On the way back, I asked him to stop so I could run back and take a picture of the nomadic group camped out in a field with camels (yes, camels!) grazing in front of their tents. We snapped some shots of the ox teams and eventually the driver got the hint and slowed down so we have a token shot, I think. At the end of the trip, I left my camera in the rental car and we are hopefully getting it back today (Tuesday). So, we have not had a chance to check out those photos.
Ellora is a series of cave temples carved out of hills with a small village outside the cave site. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We stayed at a hotel facing the caves overnight on Saturday. At dinner, the restaurant’s night manager offered to guide us around the caves the next morning. He suggested an early start, as tourists arrive early and the place fills up quickly. Oscar and I met him before 7am on Sunday morning and walked up the caves.
The caves are spread out over a 2.5km area and are divided into three sections. Each section represents one of the three major religions in the area at the time of their construction, which started with the Buddhist caves in 500 – 700 CE. There are 12 Buddhists temples, 16 Hindu and 6 Jain ones. All were carved out of the hillside from the top down and it is estimated that it took 10 generations of workers over 200 years to complete. These caves are truly amazing. We started with the Jain ones, then the Hindu and finished with the Buddhist group reversing the order of construction. With our guide, we walked up the mountain to an even earlier section that included pools of water for swimming where yogis practiced asana and meditated, In the Hindu section, Oscar and I pranamed to the Shiva Lignam (stone representing the Universal) while Hindu tourists there chanted OM Namah Shiyaya, and we chanted OM with a guide in the Buddhist music hall as the echoes reverberated around us. It is hard to capture in words the experience and even the pictures don’t capture the scale, the workmanship and the devotion behind the images. It was a truly extraordinary morning.
Through this, Oscar and I experienced our 15min of fame. For some reason, we fascinated the Indian tourists. We were 2 of only about 6-8 Western tourists there and we were stopped often for pictures. Sometimes one person would ask to have a picture with us and then the entire rest of the group would gather round for the photo. When we met the same groups in later temples, they would often shout out our names. My name is particularly easy for the Indian people because it sounds like an Indian name. Here are some examples of the photos. Oscar would show the groups the photos on his digital camera, which was a bit hit. It was embarrassing and hilarious.
At Ellora, we saw our first monkeys of the trip. There were the friendlier black-faced ones and the more aggressive, baboon-like red-faced ones. They are taking the place of cow pictures for this entry J We also saw green parrots in the trees and heard peacocks in the distance. Our guide startled Oscar by grabbing him to point out a small cobra on the side of the path. Scary! Luckily, that was the only snake we saw.