Moving and Stopping

In the last week and a half we have moved from the white sandy beaches of Goa to the white snow kissed peaks of Darjeeling. We have gone from sweating all day and night to bundling up in multiple layers in order to feel comfortably warm.

Time has flown by like it tends to do when traveling and slowing down was much needed after the blur of days of moving. A train ride here, get off, look at some caves, get on a bus, get off, sleep, get up and look at the city, get on another train. That recipe has led me to feel like every location we did stop to look at was unreal, much like the many exhibits we viewed encased in glass. They were there; we just couldn’t dare touch them.

I imagine later that I will feel what I have seen. That the smell and feel of carved rock older than Jesus will stay for a holiday in my mind, instead of, like me, just visiting and then moving onto the next place. Even now, where I have slowed to a comfortable pace trying to conjure up images of those caves brings hollow pictures. Somewhere in the recesses of my travel filled mind I know that I touched walls that were painted over 3,000 years ago and statues that are over 4,000 years old that were still peeking out through the erosion of time so that we could witness them. That I did feel the history in the cool echo filled caves that took over a hundred years to construct and that feature three different religions (Brahmanism, Buddhism and Jainism). And that a day later we were on a train for longer than it took us to get to India from the states (28 hours) to walk the crowed streets of Kolkata, the second most populated city in India. But for now they are just a series of photos in my camera and words on a computer screen.**

** The caves we went to were the Ellora and Ajanta caves just outside Aurangabad. They were constructed between 2^nd century BC and 11^th century AD. Ellora has 34 caves and Ajanta has 26. At one time most of the caves were covered top to bottom in paintings. This was done by first laying a rough plaster of clay, cow dung and rice-husks and pressing it into the stone. On that coat a fine lime was spread to make it smooth and the outlines were drawn with a brush and color was then applied. The pigments used were from things like: yellow earth, red ocher, green rock, lamp brick and copper oxide. A second layer was then applied where the outlines were dimly visible; other brushes were then used to fill in the color. Last, shading with darker lines and toning down the highlights was done to attain the plastic look.

The paintings featured everything from Buddha’s life and trails to Hindu Gods to the everyday lives of Hindu people. The ceilings usually were various designs of flowers and bright colors.