Pictures and the Thousands of Words that They're Worth.

**Squeamish readers skip to Paragraph 3**
I had prided myself on my ability to digest spicy Indian food for several weeks now while my peers groaned and complained of heart burn and indigestion. Unfortunately, midway through my Thursday morning class, my bowels of steel were put up to the challenge. I sprang from my desk to expel the demon from my body, and thus began my very adventurous weekend.

The bumpy and twisty cab ride to the train station brought forth several more volcanic eruptions, and by the time we arrived to the station, all forms of matter had flown before me (and most of the city of Hyderabad) in bright displays of projectile vomit. Though I considered throwing my miserable, retching self in front of the train, I was trying my hardest not to complain or ruin the trip for my seven disgusted travel companions. Apparently I didn't completely conceal my anguish though. They later recounted the episode describing me as "deathly," "zombie-ish," or "like a swamp-creature."

The train ride from Hyderabad to Aurungabad takes about 11 hours over night but my condition actually made the journey easier. I crawled into my sleeper bunk, passed out, and rose from the dead a day later in my destination completely cured having passed my disease onto one of my unfortunate friends.

Aurungabad is a smallish city a few hours East of Mumbai. It doesn't have all that much to offer on its own, but it serves as the main stopping point for tourists to Ellora and Ajanta, two near-by sites. We stayed in the Hotel Shree Maya, which someone's guidebook accurately described as "cleanish." It certainly had plenty of character. We had two little rooms split between 8 girls which was cozy, but a lot of fun. We all unanimously agreed that we made a great, drama-free travel group. The whole trip was not very luxurious, but train tickets, lodging, meals, etc, etc, etc for three days cost less that $40 each, so no one is complaining.

We hired a Bollywood-music-loving cab driver for the first two days to chauffer us out to Ellora and Ajanta. In my Asian Art History course last year I learned all about Ellora and it was actually one of the monuments that made me really interested in coming to India. It is a Hindu/Jain temple started in the 4th century AD that is carved out of a mountain. That is to say, rocks weren't piled up to build it, rather, they were carved away. The result is really astounding, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

There were also lots of monkeys around, so Nicole can stop complaining about my lack of monkey pictures.

The driver found us a kitschy local restaurant for lunch, then suggested that he take us to this fort that no one had heard of that turned out to be really cool as well...If I can figure out what it was called or anything about it I'll let you know.

We collapsed in bed from exhaustion then met our driver early the next morning for the long drive out to Ajanta. It takes a few hours through some really gorgeous countryside to get there. Like Ellora, Ajanta is a series of man-made cave-temples, but this time they're Buddhist, and where Ellora is known for it's sculptures, Ajanta is known for the painted walls. Ajanta also requires much more hiking than Ellora. The paintings are only in dim fragments after several hundred years, but each cave is still unique and haunting. Again, there's little I can say that can't be said better through pictures. We ended Ajanta Day with dinner at a questionable restaurant then once again, collapsed from exhaustion in the cleanish hotel.

Day three was much less physically demanding, but no less memorable than days one and two. We began with a breif adventure to Aurungabad's "Mini Taj-Mahal" which is exactly what the title makes it sound like. It was pretty, but inauthentic, and we were hot and tired, so we left to get lunch and someone had the idea that we should all go to a "Ladies' beauty parlor" to get mehendi. There was supposed to be one such parlor near our hotel so we followed some tiny signs down a little alley and up to a little door. The salon was really just the back room of a family home and upon our arrival a few Hinid-speaking women, a man, and a little girl ushered us in, sat us all in the family room, force-fed us tea and snacks and turned the TV on to VH1. One-by-one we had henna patterns slowly and intricately painted onto our hands and feet. As minutes became hours we all grew concerned that we might be over-staying our welcome, but the longer we stayed the more hospitable the family became, even at one point bringing out the bootlegged Bollywood DVDs to entertain us. The little girl also ran away and returned with all of the family photo albums for us to look at. At one moment I observed that hanging around, snacking, getting girly henna, and watching silly movies was quite like being at a slumber party in the home of people we'd never met and couldn't communicate with. It was very fun, but mildly awkward, as you can see by the expressions on our faces in the photo. The journey home included less vomit than the first trip, and other than our taxi hitting a motorcycle (everyone was fine) on the ride back to campus I'd say everything went pretty smoothly. There's more to say and no time to say it. I'm back, I'm safe, it was a wonderful first excursion into India.