Ellora Caves, Ellora

I rank Ellora Caves as one of my top four sites in India. The other three are Ajanta Caves, Khajuraho, and the Taj Mahal. Ellora is home to one of the most impressive structures I have seen anywhere -- the Khailasa Temple. This entire temple was carved out of a chunk of the mountain. Imagine how small the margin of error must have been. If you make a mistake, you can't just glue chunks of mountain back. Add to that the fact that this was done 1000 to 1500 years ago. The temple is huge so it must have taken many people a long time to create it (I use "create" instead of "build" because it's all one big carving). On top of all of that, there are intricate depictions of elephants, nature, humanity, and more carved into the temple structure. Again, if a craftsman made a mistake, how would he compensate? The entire temple is a carving so you can't just add back rock to the mountain. There are three sets of caves at Ellora. One set is Hindu, one is Buddhist, and one is Jain. A taxi can get you to Ellora in less than an hour from Aurangabad. You should probably budget at least a half a day to really enjoy the site. There is a good MTDC restaurant in the nearby park area.