Solapur in a day| Part 2 | Siddeshwar temple

In our first part of the blog we visited Solapur Municipal Building (click here to read part one) and a little walk of 100 metres and   we were at Siddeshwar Temple.

Siddeshwar temple is in Solapur District and is very sacred to hindus and the members of Lingayat faith. This temple is  surrounded by a lake which is actually full of algae and overgrown grass.

 It is a Gram Daivat which means God of the city.The temple wall at first glance could be easily mistaken as the fort wall. The huge board at the entrance ensures that you don't mistake it so.

Fort or Temple !!

The temple entrance like all the Indian temple is flanked with shops selling prasad, malas and colourful toys.

Festival of colours

 In India when you are entering any temple it offers so much colour and gaiety that one gets the feeling of coming to a huge Village fair.

Explosion of Colours

This temple is quite near the Solapur Railway station and Solapur Central Bus stand and can be easily reached by auto or even by walking, if you are ok with walking around 2 kms.

After depositing our shoes at the shoe counter .We started to move towards the temple.The temple wall was running on our right side and the lake on our left side and nestled in the laps of trees we could see glimpses of outer wall of Bhuikot or Solapur Fort.

Bhuikot at the far end can be seen from Temple

Just before the entrance there were two shivlings and opposite to there was this small Ganpati temple  where I paid my respect before entering the temple complex

Ek Salaam Ganpatiji ke naam

From here on we entered the main gate 

First look of the temple from the main entry gate

 As we entered the temple complex we saw hundreds of people with folded hands were chanting Om namo shivay behind the priest perched in the mandap and doing the yagna. The sound of slokas were resounding making the atmosphere all the more spiritual. 

 The best thing I liked about this temple was the size, which is very large and secondly it is very clean. Though there were so many people chanting and yet not for a moment we felt uncomfortable or hassled, infact we too enjoyed the occasion and the ambiance.

People chanting

Here an interesting thing happened, as these people were chanting I told my friend Nikhil to make the video of the same from my phone as he was handling my mobile and meanwhile I was taking pictures of the temple from my camera.

Temple top

Nikhil said "Aashish people will mind we rather not shoot the video" I said chod de mai video le leta hu" and I started to shoot the video. 

(Video Of Chanting shot by me)

Next I moved on to take the pictures of the temple when a local villager tapped me on my shoulder and said something in marathi which I was not able to comprehend but I was worried because Nikhil's words were now echoing in my mind,Hence I politely explained to him that I'm taking pictures so that I can write.

Beautiful Temple top

He asked me Tumhi Photographer aahe ka ?(Are you a photographer), I nodded and then he said "Mahja ek photo kada na" (Take one picture of mine) I was relieved and amused and said "Kaka me mandirachi photo kadto lokanchi nahi"(I take pictures of temples and not people). He smiled and I moved on to the main temple where we have the idol of Shivyogi shiddharameshwar. We paid our respect and came out of the temple. In case if you want to read more on Siddheshwar click here

Shivyogi shiddharameshwar idol

Talking about this temple with one of the locals I was told that January is the best month to visit as lots of ceremony takes place like Kaathiche Lagan which literally means marriage of sticks.then there is a famous Jatra (Religious Fair) happening around this time known as Gadda Yatra for 15 days and also lots of people come here to perform marriages and other important functions.

We moved out of the temple to go to the Bhuikot or Solapur Fort, our next destination.

Next blog me woh Bhi Dekha doonga 😆😆😆

Thank you for reading the blog. Please do comment and join my blog site. In case if you missed the first part of this blog click here and read.

Solapur in a day | Part 1 | Solapur Municipal Building

We slog through out the week at workplace and then comes the magical friday night. People with sane mind think of chilling out with friends over a glass of wine or beer, enjoy a good Sunday sleep Aur idhar hum Awara Ghumakad friday night yeh sapna dekhte hai ki yeh weekend kon sa saher ya konsa killa fathe karenge. Honestly speaking my whole week passes away like a breeze when I know I am going to explore a new place on the weekend.

This weekend I had planned to visit Siddeshwar temple, Bhuikot Fort aka Solapur Fort and Naldurg Fort.

This time I was lucky that I don't have to go solo because I had a wonderful company of my usual suspect kind of friends 😜 Nikhil and Pooja.

Train ke intezar ka apna hi maja hai

We took Siddeshwar express train from Dadar at 10.57 pm. As soon as we  boarded the train a very interesting thing happened, We saw this young boy sitting at the window seat. I think I might have looked at him sternly because he very defensively asked me kya yeh aap ki seat hai. I said nahi meri middle berth hai. He was relieved. After some time he looks at me and asked Mai mera saman seat ke neeche rakhunga toh chori to nahi hoga na, I was simply flabbergasted and my reflex action response was Arre mere ko kya maloom, rakh ke dekh le...subha tak maloom pad jayega. ( Honestly I wanted to say Oye kya hum chor nazar aate hai 😉 Anyways we had a good laugh over this. The young boy was actually very sweet chap, he had come to give interview for Railway job for engineer post. These kind of experience adds spice to your life  because travelling in train always allows you to meet different people and you enjoy your journey all the more.

Liked the pole at a traffic circle

It was 7 am when we reached Solapur station. We came out of the station and had our breakfast of Poha from the local Thela Guy and started to walk to our first destination that is Siddeshwar Temple. Normally one can take auto from the railway station and reach the temple but I prefer to walk if the destination is well within 2 kms. My idea of early morning walk is that one can actually have the local feel of the city. As I said that walking allows you to explore something which is not on your destination, well something same happened with us. As we were on our way to Siddeshwar temple we saw this fantastic building whose architecture fascinated me so I took a detour and started to explore the same. The Building was actually Solapur Municipal Office.

Beautiful Solapur Municipal Building

Ab samaj me aaya , mai kyo chal kar explore karne me believe karta hu. Had we been travelling in any auto we could have easily missed out on this pretty building.

The architecture of the building is very artistic. The colourful windows and arches makes it a photographers delight.

Beautifully designed windows

 There was  a statue of a person in front of the main entrance hence out of curiosity I went ahead and read the name of the person. Well the name embbed on the statue was Rao Bahadur Mallappa Alias Appasaheb Warad. For me it was unknown name so I spoke to one of the person working there and the information that he gave me was amazing.The information so collected from the local and my research put together showed the various aspect of this person.

Rao Bahadur Mallappa Alias Appasaheb Warad

Life of  Rao Bahadur Mallappa:

 Rao Bahadur Mallappa Alias Appasaheb Warad can be regarded as one of the makers of the Sholapur City. He was born on 18th June,1851 in a Lingayat family at Sholapur. He had no formal education and no knowledge of English,yet his thinking, his vision, his mature understanding of the ways of the world placed him among the then prominent leaders of the city. He was a reformist in agricultural techniques.A special quality of groundnut cultivated by him was popularly known as "Warad Shengdana"

Sculptures on the building

He was thick with eminent personalities of his time like Justice M.G.Telang, Justice M.G.Ranade, Lokmanya Tilak. His discussions with Lokmanya Tilak resulted in a kind of co-operative scheme for the weavers community of Sholapur. But the government did not approve it. He was more an institution than an individual.

Sculptures on the building

He was elected as a delegate in 1893, to present the city in Indian National Congress. He donated generously and without any discrimination to each and every good cause. The estimated amount of donations is not less than six lakh rupees. He donated generously for "Tilak Defence Fund"

Some interesting arches and statues

When Warad died on 19th January 1911,Lokmanya Tilak made a special mention of him in his letter from jail on hearing this sad news.

Ornate Viewing area on terrace

I don't know how far this is truth but the local person told me that Appasaheb Warad had lots of outstanding taxes to be paid, due to which he has to handover this building in lieu of  those outstanding taxes. He also said that in earlier days this was the largest and tallest building in Solapur and one could see most of Solapur from the terrace of the building.

Breathtaking view 

Kahani Saachi hai ya Jhooti woh ek alag baat hai As far as I am concerned I often feel transported to olden times when someone narrates such kind of tales.

Dil toh bacha hai ji ....Ek kahani sunne ka mara hai ji

After spending some time here we moved on to the Siddeshwar temple which was just 2 minutes away from here.

Rani ki Vav with Weekend Wanderer

Our visit to Modhera sun temple was simply out of the world experience for us . You can click here to read about Modhera Sun Temple.

It was 12.45 pm and the sun was hitting hard. We came out of the Sun Temple complex and moved toward the road outside. I was told that I could get buses from here to Patan however after waiting for more than one hour when no bus turned up, we thought of asking the locals as to how we go about. The shopkeeper told us to go to the main highway from there we can get buses going to Patan. Luckily an auto was passing by we paid him 20 Rs and he dropped us on the main highway and from there we took the bus going towards Patan.

Modhera Sun Temple

We checked into the hotel at Patan. Our Hotel was very near to the Patan ST stand and char rasta. After getting refreshed and finishing our lunch we set out for Rani ki Vav. It was 3 pm when we took auto from the char rasta or Siddhpur cross road. The Auto guy charged us 80 Rs from here for one way to Rani ki Vav. Passing through this dusty town was another unique experience for us city mongers. In 15 minutes we were at the gate of Rani ki Vav Complex.

Road map to Rani ki vav from Siddhpur Cross Road

I am always fascinated by the mystic and the beauty of the step-wells and I had made it my agenda to visit as many as I can in my life time.

Actually it all started with my visit to Jodhpur last year around this time only, where we visited Toorji ka Jalra. I was so enamoured by the beauty of Toorji ka Jalra and as they say ki dil mange more, so I started to research on step-wells in India and the most prominent name that popped out of this research was Rani-ki-Vav.

Rani ki Vav at Patan is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Gujarat. The other one been Champaner in Pavagadh, which incidentally I was lucky to visit last year.

You would be interested to read this Champaner Visit 

I feel privileged to be here 

The sun was hitting us hard as we entered the complex of Rani ki vav. Here too we purchased entry ticket for Rs 15 per person and moved in , only to be welcomed by a beautiful garden. Lush greenery and the gentle breeze of the trees within the garden made us forget all about the heat of the sun. we did some photo shoot and moved on towards the Rani ki vav.

Lush Green garden before  Rani ki Vav

Rani ki Vav is basically an  temple you can say, thus as we moved on towards it we couldn't see any structure until we reached the edge of a large pit and realize wow... Yaar aisa bhi kuch ho sakta hai . I almost froze with awe and for few moments I was transported to the ancient Egyptian World when I saw the broad stone cut stairs leading down and the series of pillared structure standing in front of me.

Wow...For Rani Ki Vav

Rani ki Vav  or should  I say Queen's Step-well is an intricately carved step-well which is situated on the banks of Saraswati river in Patan. It is believed that these step well was built as a memorial for King Bhima I by his widowed Queen Udyamati. Its hard to believe that  these step-well was lost to nature due to flooding of Saraswati river. The entire step-well were submerged in mud but to to the efforts of ASI( Archaeological Survey Of India) these step-well were excavated from the silt in the year 1980.

This Vav is laid out in the east west direction with the actual well in the west portion.

The grandeur of the Vav can be envisaged by the size of it. It ad-measures 64 metres long, 20 metres in width and 27 metres in depth. Then there are well laid out pillared multi storied pavilions.

Rani ki Vav is believed to be one of the largest and the most sumptuous structure of its kind. Its due to this brilliance that it was awarded the status of UNESCO world heritage site in the year 2014.  

Multi-storied Pavilions 

We started to go down the stairs of Rani ki Vav, we realised that its indeed deep, Mind you its a seven level structure however currently only five could be visited. While descending on the steps we come across the treasures of Architectural brilliance and the artistry of the ancient era. There are panels running around the side of the Rani ki vav which has innumerable idols carved on them.

 The major theme is of Lord Vishnu in Dashavatar or 10 incarnation of Lord Vishnu in form of Kalki, Bamana, Narsimha, Matsya, Kurma,Varaha,Parshuram,Rama,Krishna, and Buddha.

Varaha Avatar of lord Vishnu

Bamana Avatar Of Vishnu

 Then there are carvings of female figures depicting various poses of Apsaras, Nagkanyas, Yoginis.

Few female Idols 

And another female idol

The Pavilions or floors so made are supported by the intricately carved pillars . These pillars looks very beautiful.

Beautiful carved Pillars

Intricately carved Pillars supporting the floors

Standing in the centre portion of Rani ki vav when I look up I feel dwarfed by the plethora of mind blowing sculptures all around me. Be it be thenshola Singhar of Apsaras or different forms of dieties. I was told that there are closely 800 carved idols in Rani ki Vav !! Dimag ki bhatti ab poori gul ho gayi, 

Laga kya cheez banayi Rani Udaymati ne. Mera Salaam 

Plethora of mind blowing sculptures

Different Deities 

Lord Vishnu with Dancing Apsaras

Absorbing the awesomeness of the place we finally reached the lowest level where the actual well with water is lying. Once we reach the end of the we saw the Vishnu carving in a recline pose lying on the serpent.

Lord Vishnu lying in recline pose

Talking to one of the local I was informed  that there is also a secret passage at the bottom stairs which is believed to be 30 kms long and often used during escapes.He also told us that as per folklore ,in olden days there was a forest surrounding the rani ki Vav and there were many trees which had ayurvedic medicinal qualities due to which the water in the well too got that medicinal effect and hence anyone who drank the water got cured from diseases. Hearing this Dil me se ek hi awaz aayi... It happens only in India !! 😂😂😂

Did this well had water containing medicinal qualities ?

We spent some time admiring the beauty of this labour of love, presented by a queen for her husband's memory and true to her wish this Vav braving the nature's onslaught has survived and had truly become immortal. Talking of immortality the new 100 Rs note has this Rani ki Vav printed on it. Mera bas chalta toh mai sab se bade note per Rani ki Vav chap deta. Fhilhal toh iski chap, zindagi bhar ke liye mere dil per chap gayi hai.( If I could, I would have printed rani ki vav on the biggest denomination note. Meanwhile the aura of this place is imprinted on my heart)

It was now time for us to return, so with heavy heart we bid adieu to Rani ki Vav but with a promise that I will return back.

How to Reach:

Road: Rani Ki Vav is located in the Patan area of Gujarat. It is a popular 1-day trip from the city of Ahmedabad which is 127 km away. Several buses and rented vehicles ply between Ahmedabad and Patan.

 Rail:.The nearest railhead is Mehsana which is at a distance from 55 km from Rani ki Vav. You can take a bus or cab from Mehsana to reach Patan. It takes close to 1 hour 30 minutes. 

Air:The nearest airport to Rani ki Vav is Ahmedabad airport at a distance of 123 km. You can take a bus or a cab from the airport to reach Rani ki vav.

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