Nvr thght History was gr8 out of d books - Day 3, Daulatabad, Ellora and Bibi ka Maqbara

The morning at Lonar was wonderful. And so was the trip back to Aurangabad - a small auto with 3 over sized bags and people, a maurit van that stopped at every place where there were people and finally a state transport bus... We reached Aurangabad at midday freshened up, hurriedly had lunch at the roadside biriyaniwala and stepped into the autorickshaw to explore the last realms of our trip...

We reached base of the Daulatabad fort which was around 14 kms from the Aurangabad City. The climb to the top was another 150 meters but the last two days had pumped in enough strength and stamina for this last climb.

Daulatabad was a warehouse of history. Right from that antique door above to the mysterious corridors below, the place was a loaded and bubbling with stories of Shivaji and his endeavours...

I guess this is the right time to give one stark observation about Aurangabad - on one hand we had this  hardcore Marathi culture and on the other hand there was a distinct flavour of Hyderabad...

Whether it was the brilliant and tasty chicken biriyani or this Minaret, Hyderabad seemed to form a distinct part of the dialect...

After some exciting forty five minutes, we reached the top. The look and feel of the place seemed to place it straight out of the Harry Potter comic book...
The climb down was through a maze of tunnels with absolute darkness and only bats for company and their shit adding a strange aroma to place. We reached the bottom and finally started towards Ellora...did I mention that on our way to Daulatabad, the accelerator wire of the rickshaw had snapped off and we saw a really awesome "jugad" for driving...

Anyways we reached Ellora in one piece and the first thing to notice there is cave no. 16. The largest single rock-cut temple in that area. Ellora to be precise was the much larger than Ajanta; with over 34 caves and spread over 4kms from end to end...

Ellora is more of Hindu literature coming straight out of the books. This one being the Kailash temple and rest dedicated to other Hindu gods.

Visit to these places really made me feel a complete waste - I mean the time during which these were made, there was very limited technology and yet they managed this feat.
Anyways, we were too tired to carry on with the rest of the caves and rather skimmed through most of them, and we also had visit the "Poor Man's Taj"...

Bibi ka Maqbara is a splendid piece of architecture. It beautiful to watch at night, so I wonder what will it be like during the day. More than that was the fun watching people trying to click this piece at night. I mean I wanted to go and explain the folly, but it would have meant a crash course in photography... So I restrained myself... and only kept the amusement to my fellow wanderers...

Competition brings out awesome stuff I must say and the above piece was the result of the same. But at the same time its gr8 to see someone capture the techs and depth of photography so well.... so heres a perfect night shot to end this 3 day trip...

Our way back also included Pawanchakki but I didn't manage to capture the amazement there...

We finally boarded our bus to Mumbai and thus marked the end of the wonderful trip...my only expectation is from the association that we had formed... I hope to carry it forward for a long time...

So thank you my fellow mates for this wonderful 3 days of super-fun-filled-adrenaline-charged extravaganza....

Aastalavista...
Abhishek