Aurangabad

... is a city in northern Maharashtra. The bus from Pune brought us there on early Saturday morning and after checking in to a nice hostel (*sarcasm*) we went to see the Baby Taj.

The real name is Bibi-Ka-Maqbara. It was built in 1679 by the Emperor Aurangzeb, in memory of his wife. The Taj Mahal in Agra was used as a model, but the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara is way smaller, only the dome is made from marble, and the decorations are not comparable to the architecture of the famous Taj.



After this cultural part we spent the rest of the day exploring Aurangabad, searching for shade, and recovering from the heat.

Some of our first impressions of the city:





However images can never really describe the colours, the sounds, the smells, and the life everywhere. Just spending a few hours on the streets is always a new adventure.

Elephanta Island

There were were. Mumbai, one day after the wedding and almost a whole day before we had to go back to Pune.

One thing that I find fascinating are those cars that you sometimes see somewhwere in the middle of the city. The whole life is hectic and people are busy, just one car seems to have been forgotten by its owner at the side of the street and likely has silently watched the history of the street for the last 10 years, without ever being touched by someone. ... I like it. :)


Do you remember those buildings? On the left the Taj Hotel and in front of it the Gateway of India. Both are famous sights in the touristy Colaba neighbourhood in Mumbai and also the point from where the boat trip to Elephanta Island starts.


The trip took about an hour an sometimes made the impression to me of driving through an industrial area ...

We arrived on Elephanta Island, it is a small and calm island, that is about 10 km away from Mumbai. Not many people live there and it is not possible to stay overnight. Mostly tourists go there to visit the popular caves.


The Elephanta Caves are of unknown date but the carvings have been estimated by historians in the range of late 5th to late 8th century.



Included in the fee for the boat trip and the entrance to the caves was this guide, who told us about the details of the carvings, which all have to tell some interesting stories about the life of gods.


In this carving for example you can see the Hindu God Shiva and his wife Goddess Parvati. I think they are dancing, if I remember it correctly.



I'm actually not the biggest fan of monkeys, but as long as there are no Elephants around to take pictures of, what can I do?
It was way too hot and humid, so this guy is doing the only right thing.




On the way down from the caves we could hardly escape all the souvenirs and things that people wanted to sell to us. Trying not to make eye contact is always a good idea, but we ended up buying a few things nevertheless.


Going to Elephanta Island is a nice trip for half a day, if you stay in Mumbai and want to get out of the city for a bit.

Wedding

I know I need to catch up, so let's start with the wedding.

We were invited by one of our colleagues to his sister's wedding in Mumbai. So we went there on Thursday night to be ready early on Friday morning for a new experience.

The entire wedding lastet five days, but we only joined for half a day. Since the bride and the groom are both US citizens, one family originated in the south of India and one originated in Maharashtra, it was a mixture of people and also the customs were from different parts of India.
As you can see there were quite a few people.


We were prepared! I was wearing a Kurta and even had the perfect shoes for it. Luckily I only had to wear them for a few hours, they were horribly uncomfortable. Some of the girls got sarees before, so we perfectly blended in. (... almost)


We started with breakfast, served on a banana leaf.


The girls got dressed in their sarees with the help of some Indian women.


The nice colleague (and his mom) who invited us and made sure that we didn't get lost in Mumbai's suburb.


And the bride and the groom.



You can hardly tell where the Europeans are, can you? ;-)


This was our lunch.


And the whole group of interns:

Parvati Temple

Sometimes you see a rikshaw with estimated 50 kids in it. But for us, four people in one rikshaw was new. It works, that's the proof. But it is not comfortable...


Anyway, here are some more pictures from Pune.
Next weekend we will be back in Mumbai, therefore we decided to stay here this weekend. There are still a few things that we didn't get to see yet. One of them is the Parvati Temple.

We were told that it is impossible for smokers to get up the steep hill. Luckily none of us smokes, so we were pretty optimistic and noticed that it is not bad at all. At least in the morning as long as the heat is still bearable.


The beautiful temples were definitely worth to climb up the stairs.





You have a good view over the city ...






... and might see some small animals in the trees.


At the bottom of the hill the contrast between poor and rich is, once more, very visible.



We went to a small park and tried to get out of the sun.




New country, old game: Anyone any idea what exactly those bat-like animals are? There is something like an Indian Flying Fox (Indischer Riesenflughund) and they looked pretty huge, up there in the top of the tree. So maybe that's it? But honestly, I have not the slightest idea.




Finally we decided to go to the Pataleshwar Caves as a last destination for the day. We took 2 rikshaws, and one rikshaw arrived. I was in the one that ended up at the wrong place, because the driver simply didn't know where the caves are. However, at least we were closer than when we started. So we thought about walking, but since we had no clue ourselves where to go, we took another rikshaw.

Of course this time we were more careful and asked the driver to assure us that he really knows where the caves are. We ended up at this temple:


Not quite the caves and we don't know what temple it was (maybe you can read it?), but probably our driver thought it was a nicer place anyway and therefore better to take us there than to the caves.

But THIS time we could walk and actually found the place we wanted to go to.