Joe Rogan stunned by Kailasa temple: “This blows my mind”

American podcast host Joe Rogan recently expressed awe at the Kailasa Temple in Maharashtra during a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience , saying his “mind was blown” by its beauty, symmetry and scale. He described the monument as “so beautiful and so symmetrical”.

Rogan pointed out that the temple was not built but carved entirely from a single rock, saying, “They removed the mountain and created this insane, very symmetrical, incredibly intricate temple,” and added that there appear to be no visible chisel marks. He also remarked, “Look at these pillars. Look at this whole thing. It’s all carved out of the mountain… I’m barely grasping it,” highlighting how difficult such work would have been when a single mistake could have ruined the entire project.

Located in the Ellora Caves near Aurangabad, the Kailasa Temple is the world’s largest monolithic structure, dedicated to Lord Shiva and designed to resemble Mount Kailasa. Historians estimate that more than 200,000 tonnes of basalt rock were removed in a vertical, top-down excavation process around 1,400 years ago, creating a complex of courtyards, pillars, elephant sculptures and detailed carvings from epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata . Rogan’s reaction has helped bring renewed global attention to the temple, highlighting ancient India’s extraordinary engineering skill and the enduring mystery of how such a flawless structure was achieved without modern machinery.