From Ajanta and Ellora to luxury farmstays: Embracing slow travel in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad

Sunbirds, kingfishers, munias and bulbuls fly between the fragrant parijatha, frangipani and night jasmine shrubs. Beehives supply honey and palm-sized hibiscus flowers are plucked for rose-tinted iced tea. There is no plastic; electricity is solar and water is harvested from rain. The air quality index sits at 11.7. In contrast, Mumbai, the state capital, veers near 80. “Slow living is the ultimate luxury,” says Sahaj Sharma, one of the two owners.

Aurangabad, now Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, has long been the gateway to the Ajanta and Ellora caves that date to the 1st century BCE-10th century CE. These rock-cut caves were the first in India to be listed as Unesco World Heritage Sites. India now has 44, compared to China’s 59 and Italy’s 61, the highest in the world. In March, India added six more sites to Unesco’s “tentative” list, bringing up its number to 62 tentative World Heritage Sites, a prerequisite for them to become permanent.

My first sighting of the Ajanta Caves was from the top of the deep gorge carved by the Waghora River over millennia. The 30 caves carved into the layered basaltic rock of Marathwada are shaped like a giant horse-shoe. According to our guide Sanjay Vaswani, they were part of an ancient pilgrim route and served as pit stops for wandering Buddhist monks. Each set of caves were 30km apart, about the distance a human can traverse in a day.

To stand in front of the Bodhisattva Padmapani, whose downcast eyes and elegant posture adorns the covers of most books and posters depicting these caves, is to experience grace. In contrast, the later period Ellora caves holds riotous stone-carvings of Hindu gods doing battle. Even though the 100 Ellora caves include Buddhist and Jain ones, the Hindu caves have the most carvings. Giant sculptures depict tales of Shiva, Parvathi, Vishnu, Ganga, Rama and other gods.

The most famous structure in Ellora is the Kailasa temple, the largest monolithic structure in the world. Go with a guide who can explain the process of how the artists used simple hammers and chisels to remove 400,000 tons of basaltic rock and create the structure. Stone sculpture, unlike most other visual arts, allows for no mistakes. Intricate depictions of the Ramayan and Mahabharat fill two rock panels. The Buddhist caves are carved to amplify chants, making them reverberate through the space. At the end of four hours, the sensory overload leaves you hungry.

The traditional Maharashtrian thali with masala bhaath, aam ras, comforting varan dal, kokum-flavoured rasam, tiny brinjals cooked in a peanut gravy and jowar rotis hits the spot. “Almost everything is from here, except for things like cheese and olives, which we buy,” says Aparna Phalnikar, one of the owners of Dhyaana.

When Clinton came visiting, they brought in chef Mohib Farooqui to cook for her from nearby Aurangabad. For the last five years, Farooqui has been quietly offering what is arguably India’s best bespoke home-dining experience in his eight-seater dining room in Aurangabad. His Accentuate Food Lab serves a kaisekiexperience that could be set in Tokyo or Manhattan. On the day we visited, he served a vegetarian degustation menu that he was designing for a restaurant in Ahmedabad.

While global flavours have made their way to all our tables, the charm of farmstays is their connection to rural India. Everywhere we travelled, we saw men in white dhotis and kurtas with distinctive white caps or pehtas. Women vendors near the caves wore beautiful noserings with nauvari saris. Near Ellora are weaving centres that sell himroo and Paithani saris with their distinct peacock and parrot designs. Himroo was patronised by Mohammed Tughlaq and is similar to the khinkhwab with its mango-paisley designs. Paithanis, whose history can be traced back to the Satavahanas who were patrons of Ajanta, thrived under the Peshwa rule.

When the pandemic ended, I made a vow to myself that I would travel within India to experience the distinct humour and mindset of our land. Even though the word farmstay seems like an oxymoron, combining luxury with travel in rural India is becoming possible thanks to owner-run boutique lodges. The pleasure is in the creature comforts, but also the ability to glimpse a way of life that is impossible in a city.

Every morning, I sat outside my cottage with a cup of coffee, listening to birdsong, and watched butterflies, and langurs clambering up trees. I read, napped and ate in between visiting heritage sites. Best of all, I touched animals—horses and desi cows with their silken skins, cats and dogs with their limpid eyes, each of whom helped me connect with the earth.

Shoba Narayan is an author, an independent journalist and a long-time Mint columnist based in Bengaluru.