Indian Travel Packages  »  Monuments in India   »  Ajanta & Ellora Caves

Located near the city of Aurangabad in Maharashtra, the famous Ajanta and Ellora are cave shrines cut out of rock, by hand, and rank amongst some of the most outstanding specimens of ancient Indian architectural heritage.

Ajanta : One Hundred and seven Kilometers north-east of Aurangabad are the remarkable rock-cut monuments of Ajanta, containing important examples of Buddhist Architecture and sculpture, and what is undoubtedly the finest and most complete examples of early Buddhist paintings of India. The cave temples are cut into the rocky sites of dramatic cresent shaped gorge at the head of which is a waterfall that feeds the natural pool, the Saptakunda. The earlier monuments date back to the second and first centuries BC, during the satavahana period. There are chaitya halls, shrines and several viharas (monastries). The Ajanta Carvings of the Mahayana Phase rival those of the Gupta period monuments, to which they are stylistically related, demonstrating the artistics links between deccan and central India in the fifth century. The series of paintings at Ajanta that cloaks the walls and ceilings is unparalleled in the history of Indian Art, both for the wide range of subjects illustrated and the assured mastery of the medium.

The paintings that adorn the walls and ceilings of the caves depict incidents from the life of buddha and various Buddhist divinities. Amoung the more interesting paintings are the Jakata tales, illustrating diverse stories relating to the previous incarnations of the Buddha as Bodhisattva, a saintly being who is destined to become Buddha. Occupied for almost 700 years the caves of Ajanta seem to have been abandoned rather abruptly.
They remained shrouded in obscurity for over a millennium, till John Smith, a British Army Officer, accidently stumbled upon them while on a hunting expedition in 1819. The view point from where John Smith first glimsed the caves, provides a magnificient sight of the U-Shaped gorge and its scenic surroundings.
Ajanta has been designated as a World Heritage Site, to be preserved as an artisitic legacy that will come to inspire and enrich the lives of generations to come.

Ellora :
The celebrated group of cave-temples at Ellora is located twenty six kilometers north of Aurangabad. The monuments are evacuated out of the vertical face of the Khultabad escarpment of face westwards towards the deccan plains. Despite a strictly linear arrangement, the dramatic focus of the site is undoubtedly the magnificent achievement of cave 16, the famous Kailasa. (The largest Monolithic structure in the world).
Unlike other rock-cut sites in the western Deccan, such as Ajanta and Pitalkhora, Ellora was never rediscovered. Ever since the first European visitors in the eighteenth century, Ellora has attracted chroniclers, antiquarians, scholars, and in the more recent years an ever increasing number of tourists. The Ellora monuments span for a period of about three hundred and fifty years from the sixth to the tenth centuries AD.
Influenced by the practice at other rock cut locales in the western deccan together with structural activity at sites further to the south, including the pallava temples in southern zone and the chalukya temples in the kannada zone, Ellora's architecture preserves a broad range of typologies and techniques.
The Ellora cave-temples are not of interest for their architecture alone. The sculptural compositions with which they are adorned are amoung the finest examples from the chalukya, kalachuri and rashtrakuta periods.
Ellora has been designated as a World Heritage Site, to be preserved as an artistic legacy that will continue to inspire and enrich the lives of generations to come.

Ellora Festivals are held every December. The Festivals are a stage for culture, dance and music of India.