Pune City Guide
D Mohit 
There is a moment about two-thirds of the way up the 103 steps of Parvati Hill Pune when the city spreads out below you and you realise that what you are climbing is not just a hill with temples at the top. You are climbing the most personally significant piece of geography in Pune’s 18th-century … Read more
The sinhagad fort trek is the most popular trek in Maharashtra and one of the most accessible serious climbs anywhere in India. In a single morning, you can leave Pune city, drive 35 kilometres to the base, complete the sinhagad fort trek to a 1,312-metre summit, eat pitla bhakri with kulhad dahi in a cloud, … Read more
The swargate to kolhapur bus route is one of MSRTC’s most travelled corridors in Maharashtra — connecting Pune, the state’s second city, to Kolhapur, one of its most historically significant cultural capitals. The route carries students, professionals, pilgrims visiting the Mahalakshmi Temple, and families moving between the two cities in both directions every day of … Read more
The swargate to mumbai bus route is the most travelled long-distance bus corridor in Maharashtra. Every morning from Swargate bus stand Pune, dozens of Shivneri AC Volvo buses depart for Mumbai — to Dadar, to Borivali, to Bandra — carrying students, professionals, weekend travellers, and anyone who needs to move between the state’s two largest … Read more
Swargate bus stand Pune is the beating heart of long-distance bus travel in Maharashtra. Every day, over 1,800 buses depart from this single location — to Mumbai, Kolhapur, Nashik, Mahabaleshwar, Satara, Aurangabad, Goa, and dozens of destinations across the state and beyond. For anyone travelling from Pune without their own vehicle, Swargate bus stand Pune … Read more
Most visitors to Shaniwar Wada enter through the Delhi Darwaza, spend a moment with the iron spikes, photograph the view through the arch, and move on to the garden. They leave having seen one of the five shaniwar wada gates. The other four — each with its own name, its own story, and its own … Read more
The history of Shaniwar Wada begins with a general who never lost a battle and ends with a fire that burned for seven days and was never explained. In between, across roughly one hundred years, this fort-palace in the heart of old Pune was the seat of an empire that stretched from the Deccan to … Read more
Every city has its ghost stories. Pune has one that stands apart from the rest — not because it is more dramatic than ordinary ghost lore, but because it is rooted in a documented historical event so specific, so brutal, and so politically charged that the line between history and haunting almost disappears. The shaniwar … Read more
There is a moment in any first visit to Dagdushet Ganpati when the temple stops being a landmark on your itinerary and becomes something else entirely. It happens when the aarti begins — the brass instruments, the conch shell, the rhythm of a hundred voices — and the sheer scale of devotion in that small … Read more
Shaniwar Wada is the most important building Pune has ever produced. Not the most beautiful — parts of it are rubble now, and have been for nearly two centuries. But no other structure in Maharashtra carries the same weight of history, the same concentration of stories, or the same ability to stop a first-time visitor … Read more