Ellora
The Kailasa Cut
Gateway town: Aurangabad
Portrait
The Kailasa temple at Ellora was cut from the top down out of one basalt outcrop in the eighth century, removing two hundred thousand tonnes of stone to leave a full temple complex with courtyards, towers and elephants. Thirty-four caves here are Buddhist, Hindu and Jain in sequence, which is the other reason to come: three religions carved side by side over five centuries.
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