Goa Gajah
Ninth-century rock-cut hermitage entered through a demon's carved, gaping stone mouth.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide opens with the joke in the name Goa Gajah, the Elephant Cave, on an island where elephants never lived, and follows a 1923 discovery when a Dutch official went looking for old inscriptions and found a huge carved face with a mouth stretched wide as a doorway. You'll hear the competing theories about who that face represents, and step through it into a hand-cut passage built around the ninth century as a hermitage for meditating priests, with altars and a statue of Ganesha inside. Listen for what the guide says was still hidden here for decades after that first discovery.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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