Getting from Orchha to Ajanta isn’t easy. We were unable to get tickets for the desired trains, so consulted a travel agent who booked us on alternative (inconvenient) routes.
Firstly we hired a tuktuk for an hour long journey from Orchha to Jhansi. From Jhansi we picked up a train to Itarsi. This portion of the journey took 6 hours. Due to the ticket availability issues, we weren’t able to sit together. Shejal had an upper berth across the carriage, whilst I was sharing a standard section with five young guys making their way from Dehli to Chennai (which takes around 2 days!). They were very friendly, offering me food as we’d missed the lunch service. To pass the time, one of the chaps got out his laptop out, blocked out the windows, and turned our section into a mini cinema. We watched a racy teen flick called ‘Girl Next Door’.
We arrived at Itarsi to find that our next train has been delayed by 2 hours, making the overall wait time five hours. We found a veg restaurant which had a TV so that we could kill some time eating slowly and watching cricket. When our train finally arrived, the driver had to pull an emergency stop to avoid running over a scampering calf. People on the platform were hollering at the driver and trying to startle the calf into moving out of the way. There’d be a lot of squished cows in India if they weren’t sacred.
The sleeper service from Itarsi to Jalgaon takes around six hours and arrives at 5AM. I couldn’t relax - firstly because I was worried about sleeping through and missing our stop, and secondly because I started to feel unwell in the stomach region. We arrived having had minimal sleep. Next we take a tuktuk from the station to the Jalgoan bus stand, where we catch the first bus of the day to Ajanta. The bus trip takes two hours. We finally make it to Ajanta absolutely knackered, and just in time for me as the stomach issues were intensifying.
As the caves are closed on Monday, we booked a state run cottage for the following night and decided to push on through and visit the caves that day without any sleep. The caves were excavated by Buddist monks and date from between the 2th century BC and 6th century AD. Many of the cave paintings still exist in good condition. Unfortunately we didn’t spend too much time admiring the paintings because I was feeling ill and it was so hot (36c). Taking pictures was the last thing on my mind, so this will be the first blog without any. Here’s some nicked from the internet for illustration purposes.
Exhausted, we spent the rest of the day in our cottage alternating between watching the England vs. India cricket match and sleeping.
So tired from travel, we were unable to really enjoy Ajanta. Lesson learnt!
No comments:
Post a Comment