Seeing Aurangabad

Aurangabad‘s proximity to the World Heritage listed cave complexes at Ellora and Ajanta make it the most widely visited city in Maharashtra after Mumbai. The Ellora Caves are just 26km away, and easily visited in a day trip along with the atmospheric ruined fortress at Daulatabad, which dominates a hilltop at the halfway point of the journey. Further afield, Ajanta can also be visited in a single day if you haven’t already had your fill of caves.

While there’s nothing in Aurangabad itself to compare with Ellora or Ajanta, there’s enough to keep most travellers occupied for a day or so. The main attraction is the Bibi-ka-Maqbara, a mini Taj Mahal built as a mausoleum for the wife or the Mughul emperor Aurangzeb. If you get there before sunset you can spend a couple of hours lazing on the clipped lawns before seeing the building floodlit after dark. The nearby Aurangabad Caves are overpriced and not worth visiting unless you don’t have the time to see Ellora or Ajanta. If you have an afternoon to spare, Siddarth Gardens (3 rupees entrance), on the main street just south of the bus station, are a nice enough place to while away a couple of hours. You can also kill an afternoon wandering around the streets of the Old Town or shopping for silk saris at one of the workshops near the city centre.

Quick Tips:

The Hotel Shree Maya is the best place to stay if you want to meet up with other travellers. It's a 5-minute walk from the train station, and the restaurants on Station Road East or a 20 rupee auto-rickshaw ride from the bus station and city centre.

You can book excursions and onward travel tickets at the tourist information office inside the MTDC Tourist Resort, which is located near the train station on Station Road East. On the opposite side of the street is the Goldie Cinema and the Prasanth and Food Lovers restaurants, both of which have outdoor seating. Prasanth has slightly better food and service but Food Lovers has a nicer ambience and is far more popular with travellers. Nearby, the Tandoor Bar and Restaurant is a more expensive lunchtime option.

Unless you're really pushed for time, don't bother with the full day excursions to Ajanta or Ellora offered by travel agencies. You'll spend more time on the bus than you will in the caves, and you'll be dragged around every sight in town as well.

Best Way To Get Around:

Auto-rickshaws are everywhere in Aurangabad, though prices vary widely. A ride between the bus and train stations should set you back 25 rupees at most. From the bus station to the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara or Aurangabad Caves costs about 20 rupees with a bit of bargaining. The same destinations from the train station will be about 35 rupees.

You could walk between the stations or around the Muslim Quarter but Aurangabad isn't the nicest city to explore on foot due to the dust and traffic volume.

Buses run between Aurangabad and Ellora every half hour during the day, stopping at Daulatabad on the way. If you miss the bus, there are frequent share jeeps plying the same route for around 11 rupees each way if you can put up with the crush. Auto-rickshaw drivers fall over themselves to get you on one of their full day trips out to Ellora. A reasonable price is around 350 rupees to the caves and back, waiting time included. For Ajanta, you'd be better off hiring a share taxi or stopping off on the way north to Jalgaon, where you can pick up regular mainline train services.

Unless you have a reservation on one of the few direct trains for Mumbai, you'd be better off booking a deluxe overnight bus, many which drop off in Colaba. There are also regular bus services to Pune—which has more transport options if you're heading south—and Nasik, a temple town halfway to Mumbai.

The Hotel Shree Maya is Aurangabad's backpacker central. Located in a quiet backstreet a few minutes' walk from Station Road East and the railway station, it has a youth hostel feel with helpful staff, free newspapers, and slow Internet access (40 rupees an hour with a 20% discount for guests) in the lobby, and a great outdoor terrace dining area on the first floor where you can eat meals or hang out over a few beers with fellow travellers.

The Shree Maya isn't the cheapest place in town: standard rooms cost 345 rupees and the noticeably bigger air-conditioned rooms 495 rupees. It's not worth paying the extra unless you're planning to spend a lot of time indoors, as even the more expensive rooms feel a little stuffy. While varying in size all the rooms have roughly the same furniture and facilities: a couple of 1970s style armchairs, and ugly wardrobe/shelving unit, hexagonal stools, cable TV, and bedside phone, mosquito nets over the windows, and medium-sized beds with cheap woolen blankets and clean but clearly aged sheets and pillow cases. Although the rooms were in need of decoration, the two I stayed in were both comfortable and adequately sized. The bathrooms are plain and institutional, a large sink, Western-style toilet and metal bucket occupying corners of a space decorated with beige tiles and metal pipes. The showers have reliably hot water between 6 and 9am, though you can have a warm shower most of the day thanks to the installation of solar heating panels.

But while the rooms are nothing special, the Shree Maya remains an excellent place to chill out for a couple of days while you explore the city and Ellora Caves, mainly due to that outdoor terrace. The 50 rupee buffet breakfasts served every morning between 6 and 9am are good value for money, including fruit juice, unlimited tea and coffee, cornflakes, two eggs cooked to order, and four slices of toast with jam or butter. In the evenings the terrace is lit up for dinner while the guests—mainly foreigners with a few middle-class Indian families thrown in—swap travel stories. In between times, the room service menu is reasonably priced and surprisingly extensive. The staff are also very friendly, and can help to organise drivers and guided tours.

The Shree Maya is not for those who need a bit of pampering, or for anyone sick of the traveller trail. But if you want a comfortable base for a couple of days where you can rest up and meet people, then this is the place to head for.

The outdoor terrace at the Prasanth (11am to 3:30pm and 7pm to 11pm) is set back from the main road, down a short flight of stairs from street level. Overlooked by the upper floors of a shopping arcade, the plastic tables and chairs are dotted around an open square—dingy indoor seating on two sides faced by alcoves lit in orange, green and blue. We arrived just after the restaurant re-opened in the evening, and left an hour and a half later when it was just beginning to fill up with mainly middle-aged Indian men.

The menu is a pretty standard mix of inexpensive vegetarian only Punjabi and Chinese dishes like Aloo Palak, Veg Noodles and Bhendi Masala priced between 30 and 50 rupees. I ordered the Vegetarian Special (50 rupees), while my wife went for the Veg Chow Mein soup (30 rupees), roti and a banana milkshake (30 rupees). The service, which had been polite and attentive before we ordered, was painfully slow thereafter, the soup arriving taking a reasonable 10 minutes to arrive, but the remainder an extra half an hour. It was just as well that the soup was excellent: spicy, piping hot, and full of vegetables. Promisingly, the banana milkshake was cold and deliciously smooth. Unfortunately, the roti and papads were over greasy and only luke warm. The Vegetarian Special came with a mixture of three different sauces: a sweet and creamy coconut curry, a spicy, red vegetable curry, and a bland palak paneer—served with plain rice, and sprinkled with cashew nuts. All very visually appealing, but the flavours didn't entirely complement each other. The sauces could have been warmer, and the portion was a little on the small side. With no nan breads on the menu, I had to fill up on another roti.

Overall, while the outdoor seating and piped Hindi music provided a very good ambience, the food was a disappointment. Prasanth is a nice place for a snack and a cold drink, but have the main course elsewhere.

The Tandoor Bar & Restaurant is one of Station Road's smartest places to eat. Its single room is split down the middle by artificial flowers and Egyptian themed columns. There are cloth napkins and leather bound menus on the spotless red and white checked tablecloths, the lighting is as soft as the music, and air-conditioning units positioned every few metres around the faux red brick walls gently rustle plastic plant leaves.

The restaurant has 15 tables, all laid for four people except for a ten seater next to the front window, and all completely empty when we wandered in half an hour after it had opened for lunch. The only other diners to arrive before we left 45 minutes later were a couple of elderly Americans who had clearly been brought in by a driver on commission.

The two waiters—clad in white shirts and bow ties—were polite and knowledgeable about the menu, but hovered around beyond the point of usefulness with nobody else to serve and were a little too persistent with their offers of further drinks and dessert later on. The menu was divided into Legacy of China and Vegetarian Delights, with mains starting at 65 rupees. Ignoring the interestingly titled Pride of Basmati Sizzlers (125 rupees) my wife and I both went for the Vegetarian Hakka Noodles and a large Kingfisher Beer, which was expensive at 95 rupees a bottle.

The service was quick but the price of the food must have included a surcharge for the decor and cool air as the portion was mean and there were nowhere near enough vegetables. The noodles themselves were well cooked but no better than you could get for 20 rupees less at most other restaurants in the area. If you need a spotlessly clean environment and don't mind paying over the odds for your meal then the Tandoor Bar is for you. Otherwise, Prasanth and Food Lovers offer just the same quality with outdoor seating at two thirds of the price.

Just 30km from Aurangabad, the 34 cave temples at Ellora were carved over a period of 5 centuries by Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain monks.

The cheapest way to visit Ellora is by bus, but it's worth paying the extra for an auto-rickshaw unless you're on a very tight budget. You'll need at least 4 hours to see everything and the distance between the first and last cave is around 2km, making it a very tiring day trip. Bring food and water with you as the snacks and drinks on sale at the main entrance are overpriced. Only a couple of the caves have disabled access and the site is very rocky and exposed, so take decent shoes and plenty of suncream. The best time to see the mainly westward facing caves is in the late afternoon, but I preferred to go in the morning when there were fewer visitors and the sun was less intense.

The 12 Buddhist caves are to the right of the main entrance. Full of dark alcoves and small chambers, with seated Buddhas, they're much more restrained than the exuberant Hindu caves. The highlights are cave ten, which has a ribbed roof like the inside of a ship's hull and a magnificent seated Buddha in the centre; and cave twelve, a plain three storey building with relief pictures on the inner walls and amazingly smooth floors and ceilings.

The 17 Hindu Caves are strung either side of Kailasa Temple (100 rupees entrance or a free view from the hill above), a monumental building which took over a century to carve out of the surrounding rock with one inch chisels. Don't miss the two-storey cave fifteen, the Das Avatara, which has carvings depicting the ten incarnations of Vishnu; or cave twenty-nine, which is connected to the other Hindu caves by a ledge that goes under a tiny waterfall.

The five Jain Caves are a kilometre or so north. Auto-rickshaw drivers generally take you to them after you've seen Kailasa, then drop you back outside cave twenty nine to work your way back to the main entrance. If you've come on the bus, it's an exposed walk along a dusty road. The Jain caves are tiny compared to the biggest Buddhist and Hindu ones, but they are spectacularly detailed. Cave thirty two is the best: a plain downstairs leading to an ornate upper shrine, with a lotus flower adorning the ceiling.