Pune City Guide
Pune City Guide — Everything Worth Knowing, In One Place
theOpenHandbook is a free, research-driven guide to Pune. We cover the heritage sites in the old city, the bus routes out of Swargate, the best misal pav in Narayan Peth, and the Sinhagad Fort trek — everything a visitor or resident needs, written with the detail that most travel sites skip.
Saras Baug Pune occupies a particular place in the daily life of the city that most tourist guides miss entirely. It is not primarily a tourist destination — it is, first and foremost, a place where Punekars come. Morning walkers who have been circling the same paths for twenty years. Families who arrive on Sunday … Read more
Kelkar Museum Pune is one of those places that almost everyone who visits leaves saying the same thing: why does no one talk about this? The Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum on Bajirao Road holds over 20,000 objects collected by one man across six decades of travel across India. A suit of armour made from crocodile … Read more
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