Ajanta & Ellora Caves Travel Guide: The Caves, Opening Days and a Two-Day Plan

Both sites lie north of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Ellora about 30 km out on the Chalisgaon road and Ajanta about 107 km, by the Archaeological Survey of India's figures. Most visitors stay in the city and see one site a day, with Daulatabad, Grishneshwar and the city's own monuments for a third.

The Kailasa temple, Ellora (Cave 16)

The Kailasa is a whole temple cut downwards out of the hill rather than built up from the ground, and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) calls it the largest single monolithic excavation in the world. It is attributed to the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, who ruled from about 757 to 783 AD, and it stands among the Hindu caves at the centre of the site. If you have only three or four hours at Ellora, the ASI puts this cave on its short list; give it at least an hour on its own and walk all the way round it.

Ellora's Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves

Of nearly 100 caves at Ellora, 34 are the ones visited, cut into a scarp that runs north to south for nearly 2 km. Caves 1 to 12 are Buddhist, 13 to 29 Brahmanical (Hindu) and 30 to 34 Jain, carved between about the 6th–7th and the 11th–12th centuries AD. Alongside the Kailasa, the ASI's short list is Cave 10, the Visvakarma, for the Buddhist group, Cave 21, the Ramesvara, and the Jain Caves 32 and 34. The Buddhist caves lie at the southern end, the Jain caves at the northern and the Hindu caves between, so a full day lets you walk the whole arc.

Ajanta's painted caves

Ajanta's 30 caves, one of them unfinished, are cut into a horseshoe-shaped bend of rock nearly 76 m high above the Waghora stream, and were excavated between about the 2nd century BC and the 6th century AD. They are known for their murals of the life of the Buddha and the Jataka tales. The earliest fragments of painting are in Caves 9 and 10, and the ASI names Caves 1, 2, 16 and 17 for the finest work of the Vakataka period, in the 5th and 6th centuries. The paintings are not frescoes, the ASI notes: the colours were bound with glue.

Ajanta's prayer halls and its rediscovery

Five of Ajanta's caves (9, 10, 19, 26 and 29) are chaityagrihas, prayer halls built around a stupa; the rest are viharas, where the monks lived. In the earliest halls, Cave 10 among them, the stone copies wooden construction so closely that even the rafters and beams are carved, though they carry no load. A British army officer came upon the caves while hunting in 1819; Maharashtra Tourism names him as John Smith and says the name he scratched on a wall can still be seen. A Rashtrakuta inscription in Cave 26 shows the site was still in use in the 8th–9th centuries.

Grishneshwar Temple

In Verul village, close to the Ellora caves, Grishneshwar is one of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva, and Maharashtra Tourism counts it as the twelfth and last. The temple is built of red volcanic rock under a five-tiered shikhara. By custom, men enter the inner sanctum bare-chested. Maha Shivaratri, usually in February or March, brings the largest crowds, so on other days it pairs easily with an afternoon at Ellora.

Daulatabad Fort

A short drive from Ellora and about 16 km from the city, Daulatabad was first called Devagiri: the Yadava ruler Bhillama V built it in the 12th century as his capital, and in 1327 Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq of Delhi moved his own capital here. A single narrow path cut into the rock winds up the hill through sharp turns, secret passages and spiked gates built to break an attack, and the Chand Minar, a 15th-century tower raised by Alauddin Bahman Shah, stands below. The climb is steep, so start early and avoid the midday heat.

Bibi ka Maqbara and the city

In Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar itself, a few kilometres from the centre, Bibi ka Maqbara is the mausoleum of Aurangzeb's wife, modelled so closely on the Taj Mahal at Agra that it is known as the Mini Taj of the Deccan. The city also has Buddhist caves of its own, the Aurangabad Caves, which make a short outing on a third day.

Lonar Crater

Lonar, in Buldhana district, is a lake inside a crater made when a meteorite struck the basalt of the Deccan Plateau, with old temples on and around the rim. The path down to the water is steep and can be slippery. It is a long day out: Maharashtra Tourism puts it three to four hours from Ajanta and Ellora, and Jalna, about 90 km away, is the nearest railway station. Go between October and March, with sturdy shoes and water.

Maharashtra Tourism recommends November to March for Ajanta, with temperatures of about 12 to 30°C, and October to March for Ellora, about 15 to 30°C. IMD's averages for the city's Chikalthana station show why: April and May days average 38.6°C and 39.4°C, and Ajanta can pass 40°C in summer. December and January nights fall to about 12°C, so carry a layer for early starts.

The monsoon normally reaches the city around 13 June and withdraws around 9 October, and June to September bring about four-fifths of the year's rain. The ASI says Ellora is at its finest then, when every stream fills and the hills turn green; Maharashtra Tourism warns that the caves get slippery and that heavy rain makes the road to Ajanta harder going. At Ajanta, weekdays are quieter than weekends.