Tourist Attractions and Places near Pune and Mumbai

A short drive (30 kms) away from the city brings you to a temple on top of a small hillock. A short drive, a good ghat section and something unique in this temple make this a very good option for 2-3 hr break from the city.

Shri Kanifnath Maharaj was one of nine teachers in the Navnath Sampradaya, a Hindu Parampara who believe that Rishi Dattatreya, an incarnation of the Holy trinity Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva to be its first teacher (Source: Bhatakanti). This temple is dedicated to him.

How to go to Kanifnath Temple from Pune (magarpatta city): There are two ways to go from Magarpatta. Either go to Saswad and then to Kanifnath (slightly longer) or go through Kondhwa Road (beautiful ghat section in the middle). The map shows the second option which i think is the easier and the more scenic option. Go towards Big Bazaar. Take the left after the one next to Big Bazaar. This is the Prince of Wales Drive. In the next major junction, turn left to go on Kondhwa road. After this keep going straight for few kms. You would come to a junction where the left goes towards Saswad, the right goes to the highway and the straight goes into the hills. Keep going straight. If you are unsure, ask for Bopdev ghat, dont ask for Saswad. People will direct you to the Saswad road if you ask for Saswad though the Bopdev ghat road also goes to Saswad. After the ghat, you will see a big board for Kanifnath on the left and then it is a straight road to the top of the hill. One of the landmarks could be the plane-shaped water tank we saw on the way!

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Once on the top, you get a beautiful view of Pune city. You have to climb around 20-30 steps to reach the temple from the parking or take your vehicle on the road (bad road) to the right of the parking to reach the back of the temple.

The unique thing about this temple is that the main shrine is in a closed room and only men are allowed to enter it. It is not just walking through a door! There is a small opening, probably a little more than a foot in either direction through which you (only men and topless too!)have to crawl into and also come back the same way as you are not supposed to point your foot towards the shrine. No photos were allowed so i dont have any, but it was interesting watching people of all sizes and shapes get into the shrine. Plan your trip such that you reach the temple around sunset as the evening light is just great on the temple as there are no other hills around. We did the usual stuff, lot of photographs , chai-bhel at the shops outside and we were back to Pune within a few hours. Hari and Akshara also had a separate photograph session on their own. Check out those photos here.

written by Rajaram S

If you are looking for the definition of a “Hidden Jewel”, then go to this place. Nestled on top of a small hill between Khadakwasla and Panshet dams, the Neelkanteshwar temple is the ideal place to experience nature as well as mythology. There is a Shiva shrine in this temple and it seems that it gets very crowded during shivratri, but the USP of this place are the hundreds of statues depicting every indian mythology story that you can think of. It is almost like “Amar Chitra Katha” coming alive in the form of statues. Added to this is the magical location of this temple with the backwaters of khadakwasla dam flowing down in the valley and the Panshet dam on the other side giving a “switzerlandish” feel. Click on the below image for a bigger resolution one.

How to go to Neelkanteshwar temple from Pune (Magarpatta City): A trip here would take you a total of approximately 5-6 hrs. 2 hrs to go, 2 hrs on the top and 2 hrs back. You first have to reach Khadakwasla dam (From Magarpatta: Go towards Swargate, Cross it and go on the one-way road to the t-junction, turn left, take the first right at the Mahalaxmi temple signal, this is the sinhagad road which will take you directly to Khadakwasla dam). Just before the dam, there is a road going down to the right with NDA on the sign. Take this road to go parallel to the dam and reach the other side. Once you reach the other side, turn left at the t-junction.

The above map starts from this road with the dam being on the top right of the map. The white line shows the route you have to take to reach the temple. After around 11 kms of winding road, you will see Splendour Country Club resort on your left. Keep going for another 3-4 kilometres and you should see an arch pointing to the left with signs for Shree Kshetra Neelkanteshwar. From here, the road looks bad, but it is ok to drive on with few bad patches in between. You will cross a bridge and come to a t-junction. Here, take left and keep driving. The map below is a zoomed-in version from this point (i.e. after taking the left after the bridge).

As you go along this road, you will see an arch on the right (click here to see the Arch’s photo). You have to take the right and climb up the hill. Going straight will take you to Panshet. Around 200 ms after you start climbing, you will reach the end of the village where you should see something like the photo below.

Many people park here (1st parking) and walk the rest of the way. The first time we went there, we had many kids along with us. So, we decided to drive as close as possible to the temple. A good decision! The distance between the 1st parking and the 2nd is at least 2 kms and it is all uphill. Unless you are in for a trek, better drive over to the 2nd parking. But, a big BUT, the road from the 1st parking to the 2nd is bad, full of rocks and loose gravel. I had taken a video of the road (with the camera attached to the bonnet) on the way down from the 2nd to the 1st parking. Check it out below and then decide for yourself whether your vehicle can handle it. The photo below is just before the 2nd parking. The cut part of the mountain is the place where you start your walk. For those with Google Earth, use this to see the location of the temple and this to see a flyover of the route from Khadakwasla.

From the 2nd parking, it is a steady uphill climb of around 20-25 minutes to reach the temple. Barring summer, this should be an easy and enjoyable climb giving you ample photo opportunities. The moisture in the air and the lack of a heavy lunch made us huff and puff our way to the top, but as you can see in the snap below, the local villagers made easy work of it barefoot!

Once you enter the temple, you are greeted by a huge sleeping Hanuman. Maybe he was too tired by the time he reached the top! Once you climb to the left, you see the Dasavataram and if you look beyond the statues and onto the valley below, you will be greeted with a view which i guarantee will stay in your mind for a very long time.

You can easily spend 2 hours on the top seeing each and every statue and trying to recollect the story behind the same. While Akshara was  busy identifying the characters she knew e.g. cow, snake and the ummachis all over place, we had a nice time discussing the stories associated with them. See the photos below and check how many stories you remember!

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written by Rajaram S

UPDATE (Oct 2011): They don’t allow you to park your vehicle on the road at the stretch where the flowers are usually blooming. Instead, you have the following options: 1) Park a few kms earlier and take a government bus to get dropped off in the main stretch 2) Drive a little ahead (saying that you are going to Bamnoli) and park at the junction where the main road becomes a one-way stretch from Bamnoli. The second option is a walk for only a km. 3. Drive to Bamnoli through a 7 km kuchcha stretch and then come back on the main road. This will allow the option of dropping off kids/elders on the main stretch and allow you/driver to continue on to the parking area. When i enquired about these regulations, the policeman said that these are enforced only on weekends. So, if you have the time on a weekday, you will have the place to yourself.

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I normally don’t return to any particular place before few months because i always feel that i can use that time to see some other new place. But, i have been to the Kaas/Kas Plateau three times in the past months. Such is the beauty of this area. The first two times, i went during the monsoon and the eerieness of this place was awesome. The third trip was more focussed, to catch the wildflowers in this area which bloom only for a short period of 2-3 weeks every year just after the monsoon. So, if you are reading this around the end of sep/start of Oct (the usual flowering season), GO THERE!

How to go to Kaas Plateau from Pune (Magarpatta): Go towards Katraj to catch the NH4 towards Satara. Cross the mahabaleshwar exit and go beyond for another 30-35 kms when you will see a junction with the exit to Satara on the right. Go inside Satara, cross the junction with the eiffel tower, keep going left. Then when you start seeing the mountains straight ahead, you will come to a fork , where you will see a tunnel on the left. The road on the left through the tunnel goes to Thoseghar waterfalls and Chalkewadi windmill farms. To go to Kaas, you have to take the road on the right. This road steadily climbs and reaches a plateau. After driving for around 15-20 kilometres, you will come to a wide plateau where you should endless patches of colour of either side of the road. This is the main area for the wild flowers. Though this road is not visible on Google Maps, it is a pretty good road and any car can go until the end of the road at Bamnoli Village.

We reached the plateau at around 1 pm, which was definitely not the right time for photographs. So, we finished our lunch and then went until Bamnoli, wandered around and returned a couple of hours later. On the way to Bamnoli, there were some huge patches of yellow flowers against the background of green hiils. On the more popular area, you just have a flatland of flowers.

Akshara had lot of fun roaming around the flower patches. It took a while to get her to sit next to a patch of flowers for a photograph. But, once that happened, she sat (more towards falling!) down next to each and every flower and waited for me to photograph her. The best patches were the purple ones. From a distance, they looked like huge carpets.

I had been there on the day of Visarjan (immersion of ganesh Statues). Many had advised me not to venture out on this day as one could easily get stuck in traffic, but the situation was exactly the opposite. The times in and out of Pune city were the best on that day. Probably every one else thought about the traffic and stayed indoors. But, there were quite a lot of people on the plateau incluing many armed with big lenses and tripods!

My earlier two trips to Kaas were in the midst of the monsoons and this place looked entirely different, a wet green colour and full of mist. It was extremely windy on both the occassions we went and it was difficult (for me and fun for Akshara) to get her to pose for a photo with her umbrella.

There were lot of cattle grazing in the area and Akshara wanted to get close to each one of them. With the slope on either side, it was difficult to catch up with her and the cows!

On our first trip, we were probably the only ones on the plateau as it was a rainy day and the whole plateau was covered in mist. We drove in the direction of Bamnoli, but after a while, the visibility was just too less for me to keep on driving. Akshara also got an opportunity to pose with a lamb, but she was all enthu’d until the moment the lamb also got enthu’d and got too close for her comfort.

On the trip during the monsoons, we took the route from Satara to Mahabaleshwar through Medha village and kanheri dam. This was one of the best routes i had driven on in terms of the number and the size of the waterfalls seen. The advantage of this route is that it goes through a valley and slowly climbs into Mahabaleshwar and because of this you get to see all the waterfalls on the both the cliffs to the side.

A very long post, but such a beautiful place deserves one

written by Rajaram S