Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves
— — rooms the monks cut by hand into the rock.
Not only on a wall.
“Two sandstone hills facing each other across a saddle, hollowed out more than two thousand years ago into cells for Jain ascetics. Udayagiri holds eighteen caves, Khandagiri fifteen, and the carving along their verandas — elephants, dancers, a king's victories — is among the earliest figurative sculpture in eastern India. The Hathigumpha inscription on Udayagiri records the reign of Kharavela of Kalinga in a Brahmi script that is read aloud by scholars still. Late afternoon brings local families up the steps and monkeys down from the trees.
Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Udayagiri and Khandagiri are two low sandstone hills about six kilometres west of the centre of Bhubaneswar, the capital of the Indian state of Odisha. Together they hold 33 rock-cut caves — 18 on Udayagiri, 15 on Khandagiri — carved largely during the reign of the Kalinga king Kharavela in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE as residences for Jain monks. The hills rise only sixty to a hundred metres above the surrounding plain but the site is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and is a candidate on India's UNESCO tentative list. Entry is paid on the Udayagiri side.
The caves are cut into a coarse-grained sandstone that weathers softly, so the carving on the older verandas has rounded over the centuries. Cave 1 on Udayagiri, the Rani Gumpha or Queen's Cave, is the largest and most ornamented — two storeys of cells around a courtyard, the upper veranda bracketed by friezes of court processions, dance, and hunt. Cave 14, the Hathigumpha or Elephant Cave, carries the seventeen-line Brahmi inscription of Kharavela that records his military campaigns and patronage. On Khandagiri opposite, the Ananta Cave preserves figures of tirthankaras and a damaged ceiling once painted.
The two hills sit on opposite sides of NH-16 and are reached from central Bhubaneswar by auto-rickshaw in about twenty minutes or by city bus. Udayagiri opens at dawn and closes near sunset; tickets are sold at the base. A stepped path climbs through the caves in numbered order and links the upper terraces. Khandagiri, opposite, is free to enter and remains an active Jain pilgrimage site, with a small temple at the summit. The two together take a long half-day. October through February is the cool, dry season most travellers prefer.