East to West Across India

After filling our boots with excellent food in Kolkata we contemplate our next journey. When planning to this trip we thought it would be neat to travel the whole way from one coast of the country to the other, but now we are well aware how big India is! We break the journey in Jalgaon after 26 hours and book into a small hotel in the friendly little town – on the positive side the room is even cheaper than chips. The main purpose is to visit the World Heritage Ajanta Caves, about 60km away. Our genial host suggests we take the local bus, which costs only £1.50 each return.

Fellow travellers are friendly and the conductor reminds us we have a 5 minute stop for snacks. Stretching our legs gives us the opportunity to take a photo of this vintage car surrounded by some of the inevitable environmental problems mentioned previously. You can’t see how much rubbish was actually inside the car as well!

The friendly conductor and most of the other travellers shout “Cav-es” to remind us to get off the bus and we stroll on through to marvel at the 2000-odd year old carvings, each with their own Buddha centrepiece. The caves were first discovered in 1819 by a British hunting party. There are 26, most of which are open to the public although there is still a lot of renovation work ongoing. We enjoyed browsing the carvings and the cool inside the caves was welcome. Here is a selection of photos from the magnificent site which well deserves it’s World Heritage ranking.

We gather some energy and get ready to finish the cross-country epic, bound for Mumbai. We’re happy that all those weeks ago in Delhi we had changed this part of the journey from a night to a day train.

The bunks on the trains are ok, but the toilets could be better. Actually this one’s not too bad!

We arrive on the west coast in Mumbai only a few minutes late – an epic train journey East to West complete, and ready for a couple of days mooching about Mumbai.