The dusky maiden fiddles with her pearls, primps her hair, moodily gazing at her reflection in the mirror. Is she waiting for her lover…or is she merely indulging in a spot of personal vanity? Ajanta Caves, carved out of a vertical cliff above the left bank of the Waghora River in Maharashtra, are located about 107km away from Aurangabad. They were brought back to the global gaze with their unexpected (re)discovery after almost three centuries by John Smith, a British army officer chasing a tiger on a hunt through a ravine in the jungles here in 1819. He was the first to vandalise the sacred site, known mostly only to locals at the time, by scratching his name and the date on the painting of a bodhisattva in Cave 10.

A number of large projects were commissioned to copy the paintings found in the Ajanta Caves in 1861 under the auspices of the newly formed Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In 1845, Robert Gill an artist, was the first such to do this; these paintings were then shipped off to London along with his accompanying notes. In 1872 after a fire resulted in many of his works going up in flames, artist John Griffith was commissioned to do a fresh lot. If you are in London next check out some of Griffith’s works at the Victoria and Albert Museum.