E is for... Elephanta ... n ... Ellora

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

Today I'm talking about two monuments which are both in India - one already visited multiple times and another that's been forever on my bucket list but hopefully, soon to be visited! Both of them are rock cut temples dated 5th century onwards. 

E is for Elephanta Caves

The Elephanta Caves are located a short ferry ride away from the Gateway of India in Mumbai, on an island in the Sea of Oman. Archaeological evidence shows that the island has been settled since the 2nd century BCE. It is known as Gharapuri in the vernacular, literally 'the city of caves.' Controlled by a succession of Indian ruling dynasties - it passed into Portuguese control when they wrested power from the local rulers in 1534. Gharapuri was renamed as Ilha Elefante or the Island of the Elephant after a colossal elephant statue the Portuguese found there. The name morphed to Elephanta and has stuck through British colonial rule till the present time.  It has been designated as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1987.

Elephanta is a mix of Hindu and Buddhist shrines, there are five rock cut caves in the western hill and a couple of Buddhist stupas on the eastern side. The most significant of these and also the most visited, is the Great Cave known as Cave 1 which is dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. 

The sanctum sanctorum or garbha griha
(lit womb house) with the shiva lingam.
Two dwarpalas or guards stand on either
side of the door.

The caves and reliefs are cut out of a fine grained igneous rock called
basalt. It is one of the toughest rocks to work, requiring diamond tools
in modern contexts. At the time when these caves were carved, they would
require arduous and long labour to achieve the precision we see. Epic! - when
you think those columns are actually holding up an entire hillside for
nearly one and half millennia!
  

This is the most famous statue of the Great Cave, depicting Shiva
in all His forms as the Creator, Protector and Destroyer. Only three
faces are visible, but the statue consists of five faces - one facing
the back and one on top cannot be seen.

The Ardhanarishwara - an androgynous form of Shiva with his
consort Parvati, depicting the god as half male and half female.

Specific visitor figures are hard to find, however, the Elephanta Caves are a popular destination in Mumbai,  which is the second most visited city in India and gets around 6 million visitors every year. A sizeable number of them would most likely take that ferry trip to the Elephanta Caves. 

Read more about the Elephanta Caves here and here. 

Ellora 

The Ellora temples are also rock cut structures constructed on the same principles as the Elephanta, however they are more extensive, more elaborately carved and sophisticated in detail. They comprise of over a 100 rock carved temples combining Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples and monasteries constructed between 753 CE to 982 CE. Just 34 of these are open to the public.  They have been a UNESCO heritage site since 1983.

The Kailashnath temple is the largest in the complex and an example par excellence of of a free standing structure carved from a single monolith. It is a temple dedicated to Shiva shaped like a chariot. The  carvings are beyond exquisite. I haven't been there yet, but plan to get there to see for myself someday. Meanwhile, watch this short clip on the three bigwig rock cut complexes in India below: 

More than a million visitors go to the Ellora Caves annually, the overwhelming majority of them Indians. Less than 0.5% of the visitors are foreigners. Compare this to the  international travellers that go to Petra for instance, another rock carved historical monument in Jordan. It receives more than 10X the number of foreign visitors. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad. Over tourism is a serious risk to historical monuments. It does indicate however, how poorly India markets its monuments abroad or utilises its tourism potential. 

Read more about the Ellora Cave Complex over here and here. 

E could also have been for the El Alamein Military Museum and the WWII Cemetery but visiting them turned both my heart and brain inside out, particularly reading the names and ages on the young men's gravestones, mostly 20-something old, oh my goodness.  I didn't get any photographs. It was just beyond awful. 

Not the least because we don't seem to learn anything from these immeasurable levels of loss and grief humanity inflicts on itself century after century, decade after decade. I'm acutely aware of these monuments and their importance even if I'm not revisiting them in this series. They are a stark lesson in how not to repeat history. 

More than 75,000 people have died in Gaza conflict, whether it is a genocide is being addressed in the International Court of Justice. According to estimates by CSIS, more than 1.8 million casualties might have resulted from the Ukrainian war. As I schedule this post, there is another completely unnecessary war going on in the Middle East with more and more nations being dragged into it whether they want to or not.  UNHCR has estimated the current number of refugees at over 42 million worldwide. More than 300,000 people have been displaced during this round of Iran-US/Israel conflict, more than 2000 dead in Iran, I'm not sure of the exact count for US and Israel, I only know that the total is heavy and heart breaking. What can I say? 

May our young people everywhere remain safe and healthy and may we their elders learn to do better.  

Read about the El Alamein Military Museum by clicking the link here and about the war cemetery here. 

~~~

Did you know that Indian rock cut temples were carved top-down starting with the ceilings first? - a marvel of both aesthetic elegance and  more importantly, mind blowing engineering. 

Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026