Kanheri Caves

This guide to the Kanheri Caves in Mumbai starts inside Cave Eleven, where a stone bed carved from basalt marks where the head monk once slept among sixteen rock-cut cells. It traces the site to the first century, when monks began hollowing this volcanic outcrop with funding from merchants, nobles and a Satavahana queen, and follows the rainwater cisterns that sustained the community through nine centuries. A Bengali scholar named Atisha once studied in this same jungle.