Pandavleni Caves
As always, first stop was chai, followed by vada pav. Then we started to walk.
Today's destination is Pandavleni Caves. These are 24 ancient Buddhist rock caves cut into the hillside, dating back to the 3rd century
The walk took us along main roads, side streets and through little villages. We bought bananas along the way to snack on.
We had been told there was a trekking route up the hill which the locals use...luckily we could see this on maps.me so headed for that. After a couple of wrong turns, as there were various well trodden tracks, we arrived at the bottom of the rockface. There was a great view over Nashik.
There was a climbing rope hanging down one of the rockfaces but we didn't fancy this. There was a fenced area so we followed this around. The fence ended and there was a security guard sat there. He was playing on his phone and either didn't notice us or was not concerned when we emerged from the bushes!
The rock caves had some lovely carvings. We wandered round, had a few selfies with other visitors and then made our way back down.
At the bottom is a huge domed Buddhist temple. Inside there is an enormous gold statue of Buddha. The dome is completely plain other than the statue and even the quietest whisper echoed around - quite eerie.
On the way back we stopped for chai. We passed a shop with lots of balloons outside. We went over to see and were invited in. It was the opening day of a new jewelry shop. We were given sweets and looked at all the lovely things for sale. We then had our photo taken inside and outside the shop and Christine was presented with a small velvet bag with the shop name on the front.
Next stop was food. Christine opted for sev puri and pani puri whilst Darryl went for veg thali. Back at our accommodation we chatted with the neighbours, rested for a while and then went out for hot milk. Our neighbour appeared at the same cafe and waved to say hi!
Later our friends came to meet us and we went to the park to play badminton. Neither of us having played a racket sport for many years, we were not very good! We blamed our performance on the dark night, the bright spot lights, the lightweight racquets, the yellow shuttlecock and any other nonsense! We were just ...
