Ellora

Ellora is 34 rock-cut caves spanning six centuries and three religious traditions — Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain — carved in chronological sequence into a single basalt escarpment, including the Kailash temple, the most audacious piece of rock-cut architecture on earth.

The Kailash temple (Cave 16) was carved top-down from a single basalt cliff face by the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the 8th century, removing an estimated 200,000 tonnes of rock to reveal a Shiva temple of three storeys with a courtyard, a gopura, subsidiary shrines, elephant sculptures, and a main tower rising 30 metres — all from a single piece of stone. It is not a building in the conventional sense because nothing was added; the finished structure is the original rock minus what was removed.

The Jain caves at the northern end of the site, from the 9th to 11th centuries, are the most delicately carved and the least visited — which makes them the most rewarding for the visitor willing to walk to the far end of the escarpment. The Indra Sabha (Cave 32) has an upper storey carved with such fine detail that the stone appears lace-like in certain lights, the carvers seeming to have been competing to demonstrate what was possible before the tradition they were working in was interrupted.

Places to Visit in Ellora

• Kailasa Temple
• Buddhist cave group
• Jain cave group
• Hindu cave group

Things to Do in Ellora

• Rock-cut cave temple tour
• Kailasa Temple architecture study
• Sunrise photography at the caves