Montag, 17. Mai 2010

Karla Caves Lonavala

Sorry to everyone who was begging for new pictures. ;-) Here you go:

We were told by our colleagues that we should not go to Lonavala before the monsoon rain starts, because it is so much nicer when everything turns green. That's probably right, but it applies to all trips around Pune and since we did not want to sit at home and wait 4 more weeks until the monsoon starts, we went nevertheless.

40 km from Pune is the small town Lonavala, which is famous for several buddhist caves. The oldest one dates back to 160 B.C.
Right in front of the caves was built a modern temple (I wonder why), as you can see on the picture below.


The cave itself is not comparable to the Ellora Caves, being much smaller and with less variety of carvings. But it was still a nice place to see and definitely also impressive, given that the whole caves where carved from solid stone.


On top of the pillars you can see people riding on elephants. I hope the ones who constantly demand elephants appreciate this!



And to spoil those people, there are even more and bigger elephants in front of the cave! ;-)


Our guide gave us the opportunity to climb up the hill behind the caves (after yelling for 5 minutes at the man with the big gun who didn't want to open the gate for us). I assume that we were not supposed to climb up there (and we actually had to climb), but it was a nice view over the valley and definitely worth it.


Imagine everything that is brown in green... and you know what the pictures would have been like if we had waited for the monsoon.





This is our guide. Strangely we were all alone up there on the hill, while lots of people were around the caves.
Maybe they didn't get behind the guy with the gun. Or they were concerned about the cobras that our guide talked about. But most likely they just thought it is incredible stupid and pointless to climb up there.


However I enjoyed the view and the refreshing wind.


There were not many flowers up on the hill, but some.
Okay, actually that was the only one. Maybe we should have waited for the monsoon rain?


For the first time we took the luxury to have a car driving us to our goal, this guy below was our driver.



We had to walk up to the caves and back, but luckily our driver and the guide were walking so fast that we didn't have the time to buy anything.


While we were walking down my half empty bottle of cold Pepsi was taken out of my hands. I am just not sure if the boy who took it and ran away wanted to drink it or if he will replace the missing Pepsi with water and sell it again.



Right at the bottom of the hill we had the opportunity to buy toys or living hens (left in the picture). But once again we could resist the temptation.



Of the different gods Ganesha is the one that people pray to asking for luck and he is also known as the "remover of obstacles". This is the reason why you will find a Ganesha figure in most rickshaws and cars.
With the help of this little Ganesha in our car we got back home safely.

3 Kommentare:

Unknown hat gesagt…

Awwww Elephants!!! :-)

Finally new pictures!! I was dying to hear from your next trip ;-)

Unknown hat gesagt…

Great photos in the cave! Those pillars are impressive and I like how you used the light coming from the entrance.

okieh hat gesagt…

@ Kristina: Now even more elephants. And even real ones. ;-)

@ Greg: Those caves are fascinating for that. It would be fun to bring a tripod and just play around with the settings ...