Ajanta Caves

The Ajanta Caves are a horseshoe of 30 rock-cut Buddhist caves carved into a basalt cliff above the Waghora river in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district. The earliest caves (Hinayana phase) date to roughly 200 BCE; the later Mahayana phase caves were excavated between 460–480 CE under the patronage of Vakataka king Harishena. After the Vakataka collapse the caves were abandoned and forgotten — rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer, John Smith, who chased a tiger into the gorge during a hunt and stumbled on the entrance. The headline caves are the painted ones: Cave 1 (the Padmapani Bodhisattva), Cave 2 (the Hariti panel), Cave 16 (the dying princess), and Cave 17 (the most extensive surviving murals). The pigments are mineral-based, applied on a lime-plaster ground, and depict Jataka tales (previous lives of the Buddha). UNESCO inscribed the site in 1983. Visit early — the caves close at 17:30 and the murals are best in mid-morning light.