Aurangabad/Ellora

En route to Ellora, we stopped at the 12th century hilltop fortress of Daulatabad - infamous from 1328 when the sultan of Delhi dubbed it the new capital, marching the entire population of Delhi 1100km to populate it! We climbed to the top of the bastion, passing through ridiculous defenses, including a pitch-black, spiralling, bat-thick tunnel. Exhausted, we triumphed at reaching the top and the sweet views, having mounted seemingly endless staircases.

Ellora was more amazingly carved than ajanta, but in a less impressive location - 34 caves (Buddhist, Hindu and Jain) lining a long rock escarpment. The highlight was definitely the Kailasa temple, which is absolutely huge and hewn out of one rock! One of the weirder carvings was of Shiva emerging from a huge phallic symbol - we didn't really know how to react, and moved on swiftly.

On our way back into Aurangabad we stopped at "the poor man's Taj" - basically a junior, budget version of the Agra Taj, whose construction cost 1/200th of the real thing's. Personally I thought it was a dick move calling it a "poor man's" construction - it was fairly massive, had its own tout horde, and certainly beats any modern equivalent: a "love u mum" tattoo, perhaps.

Near to achieving inner peace, I rarely get angry. I was fuming that evening, however, when our hotel charged us for an extra night having promised not to do so (#polishinstincts), and we left Aurangabad on our sleeper train feeling cheated. Petty as ever, we launched a cyber attack on the hotel's tripadvisor, leaving scathing reviews under the guise of an honest old man.

With love