After a very satisfied tour at Ajanta Caves, I continued my journey to Ellora Caves, another rock craving wonder of India near the city of Aurangabad, to see the famous Kailasa Temple. When I arrived Ellora I was very surprised to find out that there was no tourist facilities or protection scheme like in Ajanta. From the entrance next to the main road I immediately saw the large Kailasa Temple with hundreds of tourists and a nice flower garden, a common landscape decoration in other countries’ tourist attractions, but a rare sight in India! Since the place was quite large, tourists could drive their cars to see Hindu and Jain Caves directly.

Jain caves were the first group of caves I saw, this was my first time to see Jainism temple. I was amazed with its unbelievable intricate details of rock craving and the fact that many ancient colors were still visible. The design of caves layout and details were truly unique and depiction of Jainism icons really like ancient Egyptian one. The next group I saw was the Hindu caves, I had to say that I did not feel any special with this group of caves, apart from the impressive rows of columns in cave 29 and ridiculous dry waterfall landscape. The depiction of Hinduism deity was not graceful like in Elephanta Caves near Mumbai, but the depiction of Giant also in cave 29 was truly impressive, the face really reminded me the face of Ni-o Guardian in Japan. Then I went to see the Kailasa Temple, at first I was overwhelmed by its size, dark color, and hundreds of colorful sari of Indian women in the compound. After looked around the temple for about 45 minutes, while the temple itself was a wonder of ancient engineering, the impressive cut to make corridor around the main temple was breathtaking, a great evidence of human genius and creativity using for god, I hardly could say that I enjoyed Kailasa Temple. I found that the overall craving depictions were not such great compared to Jain group or in Ajanta or Elephanta, the brilliant depiction of Ramayana story was great but few scene that truly stunning. The temple architecture was similar to normal Hindu temple, so only the fact that this temple was monolith was impressive for me. I also did climb to see the whole Kailasa Temple from the cliff behind the temple; the view was stunning and gave me a chance to see details of temple’s spire, but in my opinion the best reason to climb up here was to see cave 15, this small but intricate cave by far the best cave in all Hindu group.

Then I went to Buddhist group, since I saw the better one at Ajanta, I did not feel any special and decided to walk back to Kailasa Temple where my driver, who eagerly wanted me to visit Himroo sari factory, was waiting. Although the overall experience of Ellora was great and Ellora itself was truly impressive, I would prefer Ajanta more than Ellora. Since Ajanta was much better in terms of location and site protection management than Ellora. Since I already saw all currently UNESCO World Heritage listed man made and natural cave temples in South Asia, Ajanta, Ellora, Elephanta and Dambulla in Sri Lanka, I would like to point out the best of each four sites for other people to understand their uniqueness. If you want to see the best Buddhist craving and paintings then go to Ajanta, to see the most graceful Hindu cravings then Elephanta, to see the engineering wonder then Ellora, to see the most vivid Buddhist iconography then Dambulla, but better to see all caves and enjoy the trip to incredible India and Sri Lanka.