Over the mountains and to Aurangabad

We're currently in an iWay internet cafe in Aurangabad where we are spending the night and preparing for a day of site seeing tomorrow at the Ajanta caves about 100km northeast of the city. We had planned on seeing the caves at Ellora as well (20km northwest of Aurangabad), but apparently those are closed on Tuesday so we'll just head to Ajanta, and with the extra time perhaps we'll be able to stop and see the fort along the way.

Speaking of forts, Protapgad fort outside of Mahabaleshwar was amazing. On the way to Pune we drove through Mahabaleshwar, which is a city high up in the Western Ghats about 1300m up or so. About 20km outside the city, there was a fort at the very top of a hill that surveyed the entire surrounding mountain ranges. (Yes Varun, we went through the mountains. I know that was the one piece of advice you gave us to be careful about and avoid, but we survived, it was beautiful, and the driving was good practice for climbing the hills in Nepal I'm sure). I'll try and get Alex to post some pictures from the fort sometime soon....