Elephanta Caves

There are a bunch of sets of caves in China that are significant Buddhist sites. There are also some sites here in India that are equally important to Hinduism. One of them is the Elephanta Island and Caves here in Mumbai.

Elephanta Island is an island that is out in the bay off the western side of the city of Mumbai. It is reached by ferry from the Gateway of India and sailing past the Indian Navy yards. This produced another couple of forbidden photos that, had the navy taken issue, could have resulted in the confiscation of my camera. That would have really, really sucked. Of course, the thought of having to protect military secrets didn't even occur to me. I'm from Canada for crying out loud. We barely have a military anymore, and certainly nowhere near where I live. (The government removed the last of anything military from Calgary many years ago.) Of course, having taken a couple of photos before being noticed and being told to desist by the ship's crew, I didn't erase them. So I have a photo of a submarine in motion, and of the navy shipyards. Then I put my camera away to keep it from being lost, this time to the authorities. And out of respect to the secrecy of the area, you will never see those photos. Sorry. Well, I'm not really, but...

Upon arrival at Elephanta Island, it was a long walk along the wharf to the little tourist area at the base of the hill where the caves were located. If a person didn't want to walk, there was a little train that went to the tourist area's entrance as well.

Then I was confronted with something that was even more infuriating than camera fees. At least they are part of getting into a site, annoying as they are. The caves are located within the limits of one of the villages on the island. In order to reach them and the entry gate, visitors have to pass through the tourist area at the town. And in order to enter the town's tourist area, an entrance fee is assessed. This is completely unreasonable to me. Past the village's entrance gate is a stair up to the entrance gate to the Elephanta Caves, and there are lines of tourist crap selling kiosks on either side of the stairs. And yet, they seem to think that getting whatever revenue that is pulled from those tourist crap selling kiosks is not enough, and they need to add an extra fee for just entering the area where a visitor is confronted with the tourist crap selling kiosks. And I didn't think there was any way to be more annoyed by an extra charge than I get at the silly camera fees. It makes absolutely no difference to me that it was only 5 rupees (about 10 cents). That is just a dumb thing to do when you want people to buy tourist crap from the tourist crap selling kiosks.

But at the time, the dumbness of the move hadn't yet incensed me and I made my way up to the entrance to the Elephanta Caves. And there, I discovered that Mumbai isn't quite so money-hungry as other places in India. There was no camera fee. It was simply a 15 or 20 times increase in the fee an Indian pays to get in. But at 250 rupees, it wasn't so bad.

The first thing I saw inside the gate was a museum that contained a bunch of explanations about the caves and their significance. And they had plenty of photos of the carvings inside the caves. Most were of Shiva, in his various poses and guises, saviour, destroyer, and all the rest. After going through the museum, I was hoping that the reality would equal the photos inside the museum.

I needn't have worried. I saw amazing statues and carvings all through the main cave. The artistry was amazing.

The main cave was the most spectacular. The other four or five caves had little remaining that was of significance, but still were a little interesting.

Then it was back down and past some mean-looking monkeys. They looked like they might pull knives and threaten visitors for their goodies.

This one was eyeing the man's bottle of water. I had watched another monkey get hold of a water bottle and then get it open. These monkeys were smart!

Back at the entrance of the area, there was a short hike to the top of a nearby hill for a panoramic view of the whole island and area. The hill was called Cannon Hill. At the top there were actually a couple of cannons. They also looked taken care of. I'm not sure if they could fire now, but they looked pretty good.

Unfortunately the panoramic view was blocked by the trees growing all over. But at least they weren't cut down to give the promised view. It took a bit of effort to find the view, but I did find one.

And despite the tone of this post, I was mightily impressed by the caves and the carvings and statues inside.