Aurangabad-Bijapur-Badami-Goa

Well, well, long ago not written anything, just somehow the internet was not crossing our way.... Or not in the required bandwidth. But here we are again.
Aurangabad was fine, just our train was a good 4 hours delayed so we could only visit Ellora.

Aurangabad-Ellora
Ellora is an old city with 34 cave-temples, something similar like Petra. There are 3 types of caves here, buddhist, jainist and something else as well :) (khm, i don't have my guidebook here with me). The caves were quite different, some of them really simple, and then there was a huge magical one, a one-piece structure. To make this temple, they had to remove the stones from around a huge rock, and later they carved the rock into this:



















It was also fun that we've met a hungarian university professor here, and had a little chat... Yes, hungarians are everywhere :)))

Bijapur
After Ellora we were boarding the train again to get to Bijapur. This was quite tricky, as we had a ticket from Aurangabad to Solapur, but from there i had no clue how we'll proceed, but luckily just as we got from the trinstation to the bus station, there was a bus just leaving to Bijapur :)
Bijapur is said to be the Agra of the south, but as we've seen the real agra, we only made a 3hrs sightseeing trip before proeeding to Badami.

Here are the pictures of the city. What's interesting in Bijapur is that there's the so-called Golgumbaz, which has the second largest kupola (Kuppel) in the world.








And what's most beautiful is the Ibrahim Jauza:









Badami-Aihole -Pattadakal:
Arriving to Badami was really a relief. Finally a laid-back area, peaceful, with a beautiful sunset, and not even a single taxi-driver was coming to ask us where we wanted to go. We then asked for a roundtrip in Pattadakal and Aihole, and got a really cheap offer - actually so cheap, that i didn;t even want to try to deal down the price anymore.
Pattadakal and Aihole were architectural experimental sites for some kings, and they've built about 50 temples in the two villages. Some of the temples now are used as houses or cow-stalls, it's really weird to see all those amazing temple-ruins in the middle of those really poor villages....









































The tour from Badami to Goa was a bit more interesting. Because we didn't have the ticket for the night-train to Goa. And in Bijapur we've already missed one train - it was leaving 30 minutes before schedule, at least according to the info i got from the net. So we wanted to make it sure, so we went to the trainstation in Badami to ask about the train. There were about 6 people suddenly gathering on the station (imagine a really small trainstaion at a tiny little village), to help us. We told them that we want to get to Goa from Hubli, and we just want to check if a specific train really exists, and what time it leaves. I even had the train number and name with me. First they started to explain us how we can get from Badami to Hubli. After telling them ca. 5 times that we're taking a train to Hubli, they told us about an afternoon train to Goa. OK, that's fine, jsut we want to ask about the night train. No, there is no night train. Then i told them again that i've seen in on the net... Well, then there is that night train. Somehow i got the idea that they believed that if that girl has a paper, and there is some info WRITTEN down on it, then it must be true. So even if they don't know anything about the train, if i can show them my paper with the data, then the train must also exist.....
After this small intermezzo we finally really got to Hubli (yes, madam, there are busses every 30 mins.... somehow we had to wait 50 min until there was one...). In Hubli we had to get from the bus station to the railway station. Seems like i'm pretty much getting used to dealing down the price, as i had not even the slightest idea how far the bus stand is from the railway station, but since the taxi-driver said 25 rupees, i told him 20, and he took us :))))

On the trainstation we were asking about the train: yes, it does exist. And are there also available seats? (Quite important on a night-train...) Well, they don't know, we shall ask the main conductor. We went to him, first he said that we should only buy a "general ticket", get on the train, and then the conductor on the train will give us seats. OK, just what if he can't? Especially that it turned out that only 3 coaches of the whole train are going to Vasco, the rest is going somewhere else, so there is not too much space anyway.... After asking again and again, finally the conductor on the trainstation told us to buy the ticket, and then "he'll make the reservation". And miracle, he could check on the places, and could tell us already where our berths will be. The price for the reservation is 160rs for 2 people, but "give me 200. No, 250". At this point my new negotiation-skills were activated again, so i was actually reducing the amount of bribe to 220 :))) Am i great?

So now we're in goa, we've taken out a nice room 5 min walk from the sea, and although there was not really full sunshine today, we both have a nice color, and will continue to work on it (and our bellies) in the coming 2 days.

But now i have to go to sit next to the swimming pool with my book, and order a beer :)