Hotel Amrapali Pure Veg Restaurant

Hotel Amrapali Pure Veg Restaurant is out in Palaswadi, which is the village area right near the Ellora Caves. If you are going to the Grushneshwar Mandir, you will probably pass us. This part of Aurangabad gets very hot in the summer, so people usually come in looking for a cold drink and a place to sit out of the sun. We only serve vegetarian food here. That is important because of the temple nearby. We get a lot of pilgrims who are very strict about what they eat. The restaurant isn't anything like the big places in the city. It’s a ground-floor setup with big open windows to let the breeze in. The floors are easy to wash because people bring in a lot of dust from the caves and the dirt roads. We wake up early to get the kitchen ready before the first tourist buses arrive. It’s a family-run thing. My cousins work in the kitchen and I usually handle the billing. On festival days, it gets so crowded you can barely move, but most days it’s just a steady stream of people taking a break from sightseeing. We don't have fancy menus with pictures. We just tell people what we cooked fresh that morning. It’s honest work and we like being so close to such a historical place. Sometimes we go up to the caves ourselves when it’s quiet and there aren't too many tourists around.