Travel With Tanvi: Exploring Bhaje Caves

Lord Indra engraved at the Surya Gufa

A holiday calls for a new exploration. We all had a holiday for Ganpati festival, so we had plans of going out. After going through a list of places, we finalized Bhaja Caves. So as usually we looked up for the route on google maps. There were 3 routes in total to reach the caves. One was via Lohagad, via Pimpri Chinchwad and via Talegaon Dabhade, the latter two connect to Lonavla via the old highway.

We decided to take the first route as it less kilometre wise. We left around 11:30 AM. First we went through the hustle and bustlem of the city, but as we crossed Paud, we were treated with lovely scenic land and mountains. The whole route till Bhaja was filled with lush green mountains, rice fields and potholes. Yes the whole road was filled with potholes. We had to drive very slow because of it. We reached there around 2:30, it took us almost three hours to reach there. At first we did regret our decision of taking that route, but when we saw the lovely scenery, Pawana Lake, Lohagad Fort, we felt good about choosing that route.

scenic view on the way

When we were about to reach there, it started raining. So when we reached, we waited in the car till the rains stopped. Then we started. The caves are in a village called Bhaje on a mountain. There were small waterfalls on both the sides. There are steps (208 steps) to reach the caves. However, there is not much of climbing. As we go higher, its like one step then a long path to walk, then another step and a long path to walk, so it isn't very tiring. There is a ticket window halfway, with tickets priced at ₹15 for adults and ₹200 for foreigners.

ticket window

As we walked, the clouds disappeared the sun started scorching on our heads. After about 20 minutes of climbing, we reached the caves. It was a modern marvel of the ancient times, I must say. So basically, these aren't actual caves, instead, they are excavations. These caves were used by the Buddhists as a meditation centre. At the entrance there is a stone with some basic information about the caves. Apart from this there are also well informed guides that you can hire to know about the caves.

cluster of stupas

The caves are datable back to the 2nd century B.C. to 1st century A.D. All over the mountain there are 70 excavations, a main meditation hall with a Stupa, a cluster of Stupas, a kitchen and water storages. I called the caves a modern marvel because of the precision. Now 2nd century is a long long time ago & obviously there wouldn't have been all advanced technology and tools back then. Yet the excavations, the stupas were made with such precision. People back then had some serious talent.

The main meditation hall is right in the centre. The excavations are everywhere on the mountain. They were compact and dark. The kitchen was a simple room with water storage on one side. The Buddhist used this for meditation, so there wasn't anything much to see apart from these few things. Though there are 70 excavations, they all are the same.

excavations

The view of the caves and from the caves is equally stunning. Visapur fort and Lohagad fort can be seen from here and due to the rains the Bhaje village also looked lovely and green.

We were done exploring the caves. It was time to go back home now. In about 10 minutes we reached down. We now decided to take the highway route. We reached home in about and hour and a half.

A day spent exploring is a day spent well.