Today the program consisted of the second site of ancient cave temples, Ajanta Caves. Ajanta is also a world heritage site, so one more off my todo-list. We took a taxi to the site with the same driver as on previous days, wandered there for a couple of hours and returned by the same taxi, the driver waited for us. The caves are about 100 kilometers from the city, and the road being in relatively bad condition, full of holes, the trip took some two hours each direction. According to our driver the road had been just fine two days ago, but the monsoon rain of the last days destroyed the road surface.

The cave site was actually much larger than we thought. Ellora was said to be much bigger, and it barely took two hours in the monsoon rain to go through all of Ellora's caves. However, in Ajanta two-three hours was just enough to quickly see the caves, but we could have used much more time there. The beautifully decorated caves reminded me a lot of Petra in Jordan and some other comparable ancient cave sites.

Now in the evening we checked out of our hotel, got our laundry back (finally, clean clothes started to be required), wandered a bit around the city and had a nice dinner in the hotel restauraunt. Night bus to Mumbai awaiting..

Too bad I did not check what would be approriate clothing before packing and departing home. Now I have two pairs of shorts which are generally considered not suitable for grown up men in India, and only one pair of jeans.. Well, surviving with those, but carrying the shorts for nothing. Also it is worth noting that it obviously took me 34 years and Google to learn how to tie my shoe strings so that they don't open. Obviously always been doing it wrong way, just the second knot has to be made in different direction. :)

More pictures of Ajanta coming tomorrow, have to hurry to the bus now. All the previous pictures were also added yesterday.

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Have I yet mentioned it has been raining lately? We visited the Ellora caves today, crossing one more thing off my list of UNESCO world heritage sites to visit. The cave temples were built during different periods, some of them were Buddhist, some Hindu and so on. Not much anything to say about the site, the caves were definitely beautiful though.

All the day water was pouring from the sky, turning roads to rivers and our clothes soaking wet. At least I'm happy my mom insisted to buy me waterproof hiking shoes before the trip. They were definitely useful today.. Although now they are relatively wet inside too, nothing holds that amount of water outside. Umbrella doesn't really help, as the water is flying horizontally from all directions..

After the cave trip we departed the hotel to Aurangabad, and checked into our next accomodation, JP International hotel. And I can say we are all extremely happy to spend one night in a western standards hotel with laundry services, rooftop restaurant and so on. And hot water in shower without rats. :)

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Ok, we got enough of the hotel. The hotel itself is pretty beautiful village of small cottages, with views to Ellora caves (if it wasn't raining so much that nothing can be seen), but that is not helping to overcome the downsides.

The room sewers don't work, the staff is just plain stupid and not really helpful, internet access is over slow mobile link and costing three euros per hour and the room at almost 50eur per night is just overpriced for India and for the service level. Not to mention the breakfast, 3 euros (a LOT in Indian price level) for three dry pieces of bread and some plain scrambled eggs without spices.

We booked a way more decent-looking hotel in Aurangabad for 20eur less per room, including free WiFi and breakfast. Moving there in a couple of hours, but checking out the caves first.. By the way, did I mention it is RAINING? It has been raining for three days now, and I'm not talking about minor drizzle but more like flooding rain.

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Today a long and boring day was spent on train, trip taking around 12 hours. We arrived in the evening at Aurangabad, met our driver at the train station and had some proper Indian food at a restauraunt. Damn I have been missing a proper meat dish during the jungle days with mostly vegetarian things on the table. We also secured our night bus tickets to Mumbai two days from now.

We drove through rain to Ellora, where a world heritage cave site is located and checked into a local hotel. Surprise, again there is no proper internet so.. One more day without checking work mail and booking the required flight tickets, and I'm getting SERIOUSLY annoyed about that. Not to mention all the other hassle with the hotel staff, from getting the wrong room to leaking sewers. I'm starting to consider what is the penalty for murder in India concerning the hotel staff..

Big thanks go to Serai Tiger staff, they were extremely helpful all the time we spent in there and made our first days in India much easier and more comfortable. They even prepared us a free big bag of food for the train trip when we left in the morning. After arriving to Aurangabad the owner of Serai Tiger called us and asked if everything is ok. :)

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Second safari trip was not so much a success, in regards to tiger photos. We did saw some wild dogs and other animals, but no tigers at all. At some point during the trip it started raining extremely heavily, so we had to hide in the car under a leaking cover while driving the muddy dirt roads. Well, at least we had one waterproof bag with us for passports, wallets etc. Wet clothes are now hanging on my paracord-made drying line, let's see if they are in decent condition until morning.

The heavy rain seems to continue entire night, it's pausing for a while every now and then and then it again continues. Too bad some things cannot properly be captured by a camera. After the worst part of the thunderstorm was over and we were driving back home the sun was setting down and for a while everything turned totally yellow. Never seen that kind of light, it was at the same time very light and dark and everything had yellow glow.

One downside I have to mention about living in the jungle. The amount of insects is unbelievable, there are literally millions and millions of different kinds of insects everywhere, both inside and outside. Inside the tent the insect amounts are tolerable due to electric insect repellent, but outside it gets too annoying to be in minutes when something is all the time crawling on you. Almost none of the insects are biting though.

There are also frogs, and the noise is continuous. I just made one of the frogs funnily confused by pointing it with a flashlight. The usual "BEEP BEEP BEEP" turned to uncertain-sounding "Be..ee..ep?". These frogs were small, but Lyuda was complaining she me a monster outside, a frog which was the size of a damn football..

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In the night it was raining like I have never seen. At the worst moment it sounded like someone was pouring water from a bucket on our tent, not just like rain anymore. The rain stopped before our 5am wakeup call though, just leaving a lake on our door.

This time the park actually was open like it was supposed to be. We entered the park and after just fifteen minutes spotted the first tiger. A big male tiger was walking on the road, but unfortunately it decided to disappear to the bushes and start behaving like a cat: yawning and performing his morning wash by licking himself. We waited almost for half an hour silently for a chance to get better pictures of the cat, but it obviously had no intention to move anywhere before finishing the wash. Finally we just gave up waiting and continued deeper to the park.

No more tigers were spotted on that trip, just a lot of deer, a crocodile and some moose-looking animals. One tiger had been seen in bushes and there were some park guards waiting for it to show up. We also stopped there for another half an hour, but the tiger decided to keep hiding. Big branch falling off a tree behind us scared us pretty well, right when we were silently waiting for the tiger to appear. So, new attempt to get a proper tiger picture in the afternoon, another trip to different areas of the park through a different gate.

Our future plans have also been settled, heading towards Ajanta caves tomorrow morning. There were unfortunately no night trains, so tomorrow will be spent on the train. The train departs in the morning and only arrives around nine in the evening, so that will be one boring day..

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Our first attempt to do a safari trip to the natural park was not so much a success. The park was obviously closed for some unknown reason when we reached the gates after five in the morning. The park officials would only start working at 10am in the morning, so the morning was spent in alternate activities like visiting a local fishing village and taking a short rowing boat fishing trip with them. One crab become our lunch later on. :)

It's surprising how long the day feels when you wake up at five. At ten we already felt like we had been spending an entire day doing things. The jungle heat also stays at tolerable levels in the morning, so waking up early is a good thing here. Unfortunately we found out that the park would stay closed for the entire day, so we had to continue the alternate activities. We took a drive around the nearby cities with the hotel owner, visited an hindu temple and a project which provides employment and help for disabled people. Even their orchestra played us a set.

We are still the only guests of the resort, and the service level is even closing to be annoying. Like the girls said, it feels like all the time there are more people coming to offer service in the accommodation. Or that they are trying to feed us to the tigers, making us fat before that. :)

Tomorrow morning the actual park is definitely going to be open, so again five in the morning we shall attempt to see some yellow-black striped friends. :)

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The train trip was surprisingly comfortable. We had booked beds in the cheapest of the airconditioned sleeper wagons, and spent basically the entire trip sleeping. That five hours of proper sleep was extremely welcome, now feeling so much more alive again. Seems like we are in places where white guys are not too common sight, as everyone wants to take group photos with us.. Even the train personnel. :)

We arrived to Chandarpur in strong thunderstorm, lightning flashing in the sky every two seconds and rain pouring. The station electricity had been cut by the storm, so finding our way through the station and finding the driver to the tiger camp was not the easiest task. After some confusion and phone calls we found they guys and continued the last 40 kilometers to the national park by car.

Seems like we are the only customers of this camp made out of semi-permanent tents and located right in the national park. The monsoon season is reducing the amount of tourists radically, but for us that is actually handy. Service is now excellent and no queues anywhere. Tomorrow morning we should be leaving for the first day of tiger safaris at 05:30 so one more early wakeup coming. The actual national park is closed on Tuesdays, but the nearby buffer area should contain a lot of wildlife too. The actual park will be visited on Wednesday.

The internet access here is basically inexistent, so no photos in the next few days..

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Damn.. These mornings are killing me. Starting to be dead tired, but still on the way forward through the country. Some two or three hours of sleep and we again departed our accommodation to the airport at five in the morning. Domestic airport morning hassle, long security queues (girls had their own very short one) and a special bag check due to my hammock hooks looking suspicious did not exactly make me feel more happy and alert, but nevertheless we made it to the Jet Airways 737 towards Raipur.

I slept most of the flight, and upon arriving Raipur already felt a bit better, at least for a short while. We would have a full day of travel on a sleeping coach of a train next, so that would finally give us a chance for the much-needed rest.

After arriving to Raipur (which looks much less chaotic and dirty than Mumbai, not that it would require much) we just took a direct taxi to the railway station. We had been playing risky with the train tickets, as the only possible direct train would depart only 1.5 hours after the flight landed. That turned out to not be a problem we reached the railway station just fine almost an hour before the departure of the train. More hassle, chaos and crowds.. :)

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The long flight was surprisingly easy. The seats in Swiss economy class by far surpass for example Iberia's old seats, the food was extremely good to be aircraft food (even with metal cutlery) and I was able to sleep most of the flight.

After landing we passed the border formalities quickly without any special events, and found the driver of the hotel where we are staying this night. The hotel is a cheap one near the airport, one of the cheapest ones but the room is still decent and free pickup was definitely a bonus.

About India I cannot say much yet. It's hot, humid as a steam bath and the traffic is just as chaotic as it was expected to be. That is pretty much all that can be said after the short ride from the airport to the hotel.

Tomorrow morning we have early wakeup again, taking the domestic flight to Raipur and continuing by train to the tiger reserve.

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