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It's easy to see why many travellers regard Aurangabad as little more than a convenient, though largely uninteresting, place in which to kill time on the way to Ellora and Ajanta. First impression seem to confirm its reputation as an industrial metropolis ; wide streets, fast traffic, ugly building sites, and gaping patches of urban wasteland merge into a featureless ferroconcrete sprwal. Yet, given a little effort, northern Maharashtra's largest city can compensate for its architectural shortcomings. Scattered around its ragged fringes, the dilapidated remains of fortifcations, gateways, domes and minarets - including those of the most ambitious Moghul tomb garden in western India, the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara -bear witness to an illustrious imperial past, the small but fascinating crop of rock-cut Buddhist caves, huddled along the flanks of the flat-topped, sandy yellow hills to the north, are remnants of even more ancient occupation.
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