I took a short trip to see places near Pune that I haven't visited since last 10 years even though I was in Pune and I was stunned at the beauty of those places. I am talking about Ajanta and Ellora caves and Bibi Ka Maqbara. I hope you find this post useful if you plan a trip.
Firstly, I had decided to visit only Ajanta - Ellora but one of my acquaintances also hinted on visiting Shirdi so I included that too in my trip. I had booked a cab from savaari.com for 4 days with driver. We were given Swift DZire by the local cab provider Sonika tours and travels. I had booked Aurangabad Gymkhana Club hotel for 3 nights from MakeMyTrip.com.
Pune to Aurangabad, Day 1: We started journey on 26 January 10:30 AM after finishing flag-hoisting on the Republic Day in both my daughter's school as well as in our society. I took the route shown
here to visit Shirdi, Yeola and Aurangabad in that order. The driver was good and suggested us to visit
Ranjangaon MahaGanpati Temple which is located
here. We reached there at 12 PM and saw a huge queue. There is a facility to buy "Direct Darshan" tickets which cost INR 50 per person with kids free. So we went for it and completed our Darshan in around half an hour. We left Ranjangaon at around 12:45 PM for Shirdi.
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| Ranjangaon Temple 1 | Ranjangaon Temple 2 |
Some of our acquaintances had warned us to not take Ahmednagar bypass and the driver also had the same view so we took route going via Ahmednagar town. We decided to take a halt for lunch at 2:30 PM at Phule Restaurant which is located on the route to Shirdi
here. The restaurant serves punjabi food at a rate unheard of in Pune. We ordered Mix-veg with Tandoori Rotis and Jeera rice with Dal fry and Dahi (curd). The total bill of all the items came to INR 182 (each item around 45-55 INR and Roti for INR 6). The items were very delicious and not at all oily. In Pune, even in the best of restaurants, I am unable to find healthy food with such low cost. The total bill wouldn't even serve one person in Pune. Even in photo you can see how empty the plates are to validate that it really was delicious.
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| Phule Restaurant 1 | Phule Restaurant 2 |
We started from restaurant at around 3:15 PM and reached Shirdi at 4:15 PM. I had booked online tickets for Saibaba darshan from
online portal for 4 PM time. We reached there at 4:15 PM and went for darshan. At Shirdi, there are private parking available where you have to park your car and leave all the belongings behind including shoes, camera, mobile phones and then enter the temple, so I was not able to take any photos. The parking charges range from anywhere around INR 70 to 100. We parked next to
Sai Murali Complex for INR 70. The temple has Saibaba Idol in gold as well as a part of the temple in gold too as per what I saw but I might be wrong. There are some Samaadhis too in Sai mandir which is part of
Samadhi Mandir and there is one beautiful
Lendi Garden. We spent some 15 minutes in the garden to take some rest from our hectic schedule. We proceeded towards Yeola at 5:30 PM to have a look at some Paithani Sarees.
At Yeola we visited Kapse Paithani store which is very famous for its Paithani sarees and my wife bought two of them for her mother as well as herself.
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| Paithani sarees at Kapse | Paithani Saree with my wife |
We left Yeola at around 7 PM towards Aurangabad and reached there at 9 PM. We checked-in the hotel and went for dinner. We were carrying some methi thepla, sandwiches and handvo which served me and my wife and for my daughter we ordered Malai-Kofta, Cream of Mushroom soup and Naan. The food was good. After dinner, we went for sleep.
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| Aurangabad Gymkhana Club | AGC Dinner |
Day 2: Our room was having a balcony in east so was fortunate to see sunrise of Aurangabad. Since we had long travel the previous day, we had decided to go for Ellora Caves the next day since it was near around 30 KM from Aurangabad.
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| Sunrise from AGC | Room |
After freshening up, we went for breakfast. The hotel offers unlimited breakfast and we opted for it. The breakfast included cereals (corn-flakes and chocos), fruit juice (Pineapple), fruits (Papaya and Banana), south indian dishes (Idli, Dhosa and Uthapam) with Sambhar and Chutney, Poha, Aloo Paratha, Bread Toast with Butter and Jam, Jam sandwich and Tea. All these items were good and provided enough variety for our stomachs.
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| AGC Breakfast | AGC Breakfast |
Ellora Visit: We left the hotel at around 8:50 AM and took the route shown
here. There is a Cantonment toll of INR 40 while going and coming back to Ellora caves. We reached the caves at around 10 AM. There is a car park which is 400 m ahead of the caves and charges INR 30. The Ellora Caves consist of 34 caves but not all caves are of similar importance. Cave 16 and cave 32 offers the best glimpse of the artistry of older Indian sculptors. The entry fee is INR 10 per adult and child is free.
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| Entrance Cave 16 | Entrance Cave 16 |
The first cave at the entrance is Cave 16 which is the largest monolithic structure in the world according to some websites such as
Quora. The whole cave has been carved from a single large stone. The sculptures are anything short of amazing and mesmerizing. I have seen many of my friends visiting caves of other countries but if I have to visit something like this in my own country, I was wondering why to go anywhere else! The cave is of load Shiva. As per the details, all the caves consist of three religions, Hindu, Jain and Buddha. Caves 16 and 32 are of load Shiva for Hindu religion. Rest of the caves from 1 to 29 are of Buddha but caves 31-34 are of religion Jain which shows Mahavir Bhagwan in the sculptures.
There were many good caves with a lot of sculptures. Just enjoy by having a look at them below.
As shown in the last image, there is a big garden in front of the cave 16 but not worth spending time in. The caves 16 to 1 can be covered by walk and so does caves from 17 to 28. But to reach to cave 31-34 and 29, you need to take a local bus which charges INR 21 for two-way for adults and free for children.
After we completed Ellora caves at around 4:30 PM, we started for Ghrishneshwar Jyotirlinga Temple which is located
here. You need to visit the temple without any mobiles, camera so I was not able to take any snaps there. Before entering the temple, men need to take their shirts/baniyans off which looked a bit odd but I had already done such thing in Kerala in
Thirunakkara Mahadev Temple. Looks like all Mahadev temple requires this. Finally we started for hotel at around 5:30 and reached at 6:30. All of us were very tired and our legs were paining so we relied on half a tablet of Combiflam and my daughter went with Ibuprofen.
We then had some swimming in the hotel pool and enjoyed our dinner with Veg Manchurian, Veg Hakka Noodles, Veg Fried Rice and American Choupsey.
Day 3: We again had breakfast at the hotel and this time Poha and Aloo Paratha were replaced by Sabudana Khichadi and Puri-Bhaaji while Pineapple juice was replaced with Watermelon juice and Papaya was replaced with Apple. The rest of the items were same so we filled our stomach and started for Ajanta caves at around 9:25 AM with route as shown
here. See that the route shows Ajanta Cave and not "Ajanta View Point". There is some confusion around this. The view point is from where you can view the complete range of caves and you can climb down the hill in half an hour to reach caves but there is an alternate route that reaches the bottom of the caves and then you have to take a MSTRC bus to reach caves. We saw some cotton farms along the route and couldn't resist to take snaps as below:
Ajanta Visit: It took almost two and half hours for us to reach Ajanta Caves and we reached there at 12 PM. We parked our car for INR 30. There is a bus which takes you to actual caves and charges INR 22 for one-way Air-Conditioned coach. We took it and reached the entry point of caves. We took entry tickets which were INR 10 per adult and child is free.
Unlike Ellora caves, Ajanta caves have both paintings as well as sculptures. Ajanta has 28 caves compared to 34 for Ellora and all are connected on a single route. To preserve the colors of the paintings, flash is not allowed in the caves so I had to rely on natural light to capture the photos.
We completed all the caves around 3 PM and went for lunch at MTDC restaurant just at the entrance of the cave. We had ordered Special Veg Thali with Mix Veg Curry, 2 Chapatis and Jeera Rice. The thali had Dal, Rice, two veg sabjis - palak and mutter paneer, Raita, 3 Chapatis and Salad. We found food to be of good quality but the pricing was a bit on the higher side.
We then did some shopping of souvenirs and hats. The person who was selling souvenirs started with INR 650 per piece and was finally willing to give it for INR 100 per piece. Just think of the margins. The same for hats. We were told the price of around INR 400 for three hats which finally got purchased for INR 250.
We then went for Ajanta View Point which is situated around 17 km away from the caves if you take the road
here. If you start early in the morning to reach Ajanta, then you can take the view point route and from there climb down to caves in 45 minutes and ask your driver to come to the caves to pick you up. The view point has a non-operational MTDC restaurant.
We departed from Ajanta View Point at 5:45 PM. We reached Aurangabad at 8:15 PM and visited one of the Paithani shop
. My wife bought one normal dupatta from there but other items were costly and didn't fit our budget. My wife and I again had to take half a combiflam for our paining legs but my daughter was spared. We only ate fruits at night but arranged for a burger pizza for my daughter.
: We woke up and packed our luggage and took breakfast at the hotel. The variety today was Paav Petis and Upama replacing Puri-Sabji and Sabudana Khichdi of the previous day and Papaya and Watermelon juice getting repeated. Rest of the items were same. We filled our stomach, checked-out of the hotel at 9 AM and started for last few items at 9:15 AM.
: This is situated along the way towards Ellora and we had to again pay INR 40 for Cantonment fees. The total distance was 18 km from hotel. To cover all the different places like Panchakki, Daulatabad Fort and finally reaching Bhoj Thali Restaurant, we took the route shown
. We reached Bibi Ka Maqbara at around 9:45 AM. There are entry charges of INR 10 per person with kids free. Bibi Ka Maqbara is called Taj of the Deccan and seeing it does remind of the same. I had visited Taj in the year 2005 and visited its mini version now in 2017. The artistry on it is not as fine as it is on the Taj but still worth visiting.
We left Bibi Ka Maqbara at 10:40 AM and started for Panchakki. I personally didn't find this place worth visiting. It also has entry fee of INR 10 per adult with kids free. We spent some time shopping for our neighbors at Panchakki and left at around 11:30 AM for Daulatabad fort.
We reached the fort at around 11:45 AM. The fort requires around 1.5 KM worth of walk and it also has a lot of monkeys to save oneself from. After three days of heavy walk, all of us were tired and my daughter and wife decided not to climb the fort. I too decided to go only upto some height but then came back.
The whole trip for me was a refreshing experience. I hadn't thought of enjoying so much with my family after a long time. I would recommend you all to visit all the places to know India's heritage and history. I visited the place in January but monsoon is also a good season to visit but you have to make sure that you don't slip on wet surface.
. This village is famous for not having any doors in houses but still there are no thefts. It also has a temple of Shani, god associated with planet Saturn and people in the village believe that the God punishes anybody who attempts theft. We spent some 15 mins visiting temple but then left and reached Pune at 9 PM. There was heavy traffic near Shikrapur and Wagholi so it took some real effort from the driver to get us in Pune in one piece.
P.S.: I missed Pune International Marathon as well as two India-England T20 matches due to the trip. Better luck next time.
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