Two temples in Aurangabad. Ajanta Caves has 29 tickets and tours to book; Ellora Caves has 28 tickets and tours to book. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
The Ajanta Caves lie in a remote gorge about 100 km north of Aurangabad, now officially Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, so the real question is transport rather than tickets. Entry is bought at the counter at the visitor centre or online through the Archaeological Survey of India, with a lower fee for Indian citizens and visitors from neighbouring countries; there is no reason to pay a premium for a skip-the-line ticket, as queues are rarely long.
Most visitors book a private car with driver from Aurangabad for the full day, which is around three hours each way. Guided versions add a qualified guide at the caves, who makes a real difference in reading the murals, while cheaper options give you the car alone.
Ellora sits about 29 km northwest of Aurangabad, and almost everything sold online is built around getting there and back. The simplest option is a private car with a driver for the day, which collects you from a hotel or the railway station, waits at the car park and drops you back in the evening; entry tickets are usually paid separately at the gate. A step up is a guided visit, where an English-speaking guide walks you through the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain groups and explains the iconography, which is genuinely useful here because the carvings are dense and largely unlabelled.
Most operators pair Ellora with the painted caves of Ajanta, roughly 100 km to the north.
