RECENTLY UPDATED FOR 2022! With more than 130 high-resolution images, maps and a detailed tour itinerary, this is the definitive guide to India’s ancient caves: Ellora and Ajanta near Aurangabad and Elephanta in Mumbai.
Built by Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monks as mountain retreats, India’s magnificent rock-cut sanctuaries, monasteries and temples offer travelers an unrivaled cultural experience, transporting them back to the formative stage of art and architecture for India’s indigenous religions.
This Approach Guide serves as an ideal companion for travelers seeking a deeper understanding of this fantastic landscape, profiling India’s three premier rock-cut religious sites: Ajanta (Buddhist), Elephanta (Hindu) and Ellora (a mixture of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain).
What’s in this guidebook
★ Comprehensive look at rock-cut art and architecture. We provide an overview of India’s rock-cut art and architecture, isolating trademark features that you will see again and again as you make your way through Ajanta, Elephanta and Ellora. To make things come alive, we have packed our review with high-resolution images.
★ A tour that goes deeper on the most important sites. Following our tradition of being the most valuable resource for culture-focused travelers, we offer detailed tours of the most impressive and representative caves at Ajanta, Elephanta and Ellora, walking step-by-step through their distinctive artistic and architectural highlights. For each, we present information on its history, a detailed plan that highlights its most important architectural and artistic features, high-resolution images and a discussion that ties it all together.
★ Advice for getting the best cultural experience. To help you plan your visit, this guidebook supplies logistical advice, maps and links to online resources. Plus, we give our personal tips for getting the most from your experience while on location.
★ Information the way you like it. As with all of our guides, this book is optimized for intuitive, quick navigation; information is organized into bullet points to make absorption easy; and images are marked up with text that explains important features.
★ NEW! Customers can now print this guidebook with our new PDF-on-Demand service. See the final chapter in the book for details.
ABOUT APPROACH GUIDES
Travel guidebooks for the ultra curious, Approach Guides reveal a destination’s essence by exploring a compelling aspect of its cultural heritage: art, architecture, history, food, or wine.
PRAISE FOR APPROACH GUIDES
Compulsive (and compulsively informed) travelers, the Raezers are the masterminds behind the downloadable Approach Guides, which are filled with a university course-worth of history and insights for 62 destinations worldwide. WHY WE LOVE IT: The Raezers share our desire for deep, well-researched information on the wonders of the world.
- Travel + Leisure
