[Day 24] Today was the 3rd and final day of shooting at Ajanta, and we ran into a major problem: I forgot the battery and the SD card for the stills camera. It wasn’t apparent that this was the issue it turned out to be at first: I had a spare battery with me, and the camera appeared to be saving photos to internal storage. Only when we got back to the room did we find there is no internal storage in the Sony A6000, and no photos had been saved.
The day had started well with a big climb to get to the Viewpoint, probably around 300 steps up, from where I got some really good 360° photos of the whole site. I then got out the stills camera and found that parts were missing. As it wasn’t clear that the camera wasn’t recording we spent an hour or two on the photo shoot before going for lunch.
Only when we got back to the room the problem appeared, and we had to turn round and head back into the caves again in the midst of the heat of the day. Fortunately there were only six more caves to photograph, and it was a feasible amount to cover.
The best cave turned out to be what is effectively the last one, no. 26, which is a Chaitya cave, with a beautiful Buddha image carved into the chaitya, and a large and superbly cut gallery of scenes around the apse, including the Parinirvana of the Buddha and the Temptation of Māra.
In the last cave we also managed to spend some time in meditation, something we wished we had had more time for during the trip. In any case it was a good way to complete the work we have been doing.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to follow you on your journey through these wonderful historic sites with great pictures.