[Mustang Sammy]

When I was younger, always had this desire to travel the world, see other countries and experience other cultures. As time passed and my scalp went from Amavasya to Poornima, the wisdom (budget) and delights of spending time exploring India became more apparent. We have so much to see and experience: natural beauty, history, religion and culture, arts and crafts, wide open expressways to winding country roads, world class cuisine available at all price points. We just don’t appreciate it, and do a dirt poor job of promoting and maintaining our tourist destinations.
One of these examples is described in this travelogue. It is the Gondeshwar Mandir, which is a Shiva Temple from the 11th-12th Century, in the town of Sinnar, 50km south of Nashik. There are a few brief descriptions of the place on earlier travelogues, but I have tried to include more details of the journey and about the temple itself, although information is hard to come by. Although (because??) it is maintained by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), there is not much information provided at the temple either.
Since we stayed overnight in Nashik after the temple visit, a brief description of the resort we stayed in is also included.

The Journey:
The traveling party consisted of the kids (Shelby & Cobra), parents, sister and her 2 canine bosses D & T. We headed out of Pune towards Nashik on an October Saturday morning in 2 cars: Vader aka the ScorpioN and the sis in her red Tiago.
There was heavy traffic in the Chakan/Bhosari area, in addition to terrible roads. Once past the urban jungle, we got onto the nice divided portion of the Pune-Nashik-Dhule NH60, and it was a smooth drive for the most part on the concretized highway, barring a few patches that were still under construction. 1 break for a top-up breakfast and chai was all we needed.
After entering Sinnar, and following the barely visible sign to the temple, we were at the site by 1:20pm.

Life is a Highway


Gentle curves


Only wildlife we saw was bikes and some cars driving in the wrong direction


Road cut through the hill


Appropriate that the Temple is in a town named "Sinnar"?


Road to Sinnar


The large and prominent sign to the Temple </sarc>


First view of the beautiful Temple

The Temple:
All the below information barring pictures is sourced from Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica. The latter in particular was a revelation in terms of the sheer detail provided.

Wiki

Britannica (Bhumija)

Boys with their grandparents


Boys with their aunt and canine cousins


All are welcome here


This is all the information provided

The only official information provided is the above signage posted by the ASI, and no additional details are provided about which deity is who, or any background about the construction, history and various tribulations the temple has clearly suffered. There is a solitary ASI guard posted, whose main job seems to be stopping visitors from climbing the temple walls for their never ending selfies.

As can be seen from the pictures, Gondeshwar is a magnificent structure, sitting on a large stone platform and built out of black basalt, in the North Indian Nagara architectural style.
The temple was built in the 11th-12th century, and constructed using the Hemadpanthi method, which does not use any cement or mortar, but the precise placement of individual elements to achieve balance and structural integrity. The fact that this temple has lasted for a thousand years after being built like this, while in 21st century India we have roads developing potholes within 1 month, bridges collapsing while under construction and entire towns getting flooded after a heavy shower is something to think about.

The temple is laid out in the Panchayatana plan, with the central main shrine dedicated to Shiva and a Nandi pavilion facing it, and four subsidiary temples for Surya, Vishnu, Parvati and Ganesha. The Ganesha statue is easy to identify, and I hazarded that the one with the right leg folded up is Vishnu. Parvati was identified as the more feminine-looking one of the remaining two, which left Suryadev as the last one.

One of the subsidiary temples


The Nandi Temple


Example of Panchayatna layout (source: Wiki)


The ubiquitous tortoise just after entering the main shrine. It is supposed to be a message for us to withdraw our senses from the physical world and focus on the divine


Beautifully carved ceiling. How did the artisans balance themselves while doing such intricate work?


Entrance to the main shrine




Beautifully carved pillars in the main shrine


Shiva Lingam from outside


Close up


Old and New


Ganesha in his shrine


Parvati in her shrine


Surya in his shrine


Vishnu in his shrine

The main shrine is built in the Bhumija architectural style, which uses the rotating square-circle principle to construct the Shikhara (the tower above the sanctum). There are flat vertical projections on each of the 4 sides, and each quadrant has multiple miniature shrines all the way to the top.
The carvings on the temple walls, pillars and ceilings are intricate and beautiful, showing a high degree of mastery of stonework, aesthetics and architectural/geometric principles. We can only imagine how beautiful they must have looked a thousand years ago.

Main shrine closer up, with some of the elements described above


Temple as seen from the back

[Mustang Sammy]

Some more examples of beautiful sculptures

Beautiful illustrations of the female form


Looks like Nataraja




The squirrel could almost be a part of the stonework


Wall of the main shrine




What could have motivated someone to destroy such beauty?

Other countries will do 10 times as much publicity for sites that are barely a hundred years old, and will maintain the whole place impeccably. Here we have an almost uncountable bounty of historical treasures handed to us by our ancestors, and we ae letting it all go to seed.

Bird poop on the Shikhara. Shamefully ill maintained

After around 90 minutes of walking around and admiring the temple, Shelby and Cobra wanted to move on, as did D & T. All the parents and grandparents had to fall in line with their wishes, so we said our goodbyes to Mahadev, piled into our steeds and headed north towards wine country aka Nashik.

[Mustang Sammy]

Nashik:
The initial impression of Nashik was quite a favorable one. The parts that we drove through were clean and green with decent roads, reminding me of the Pune of yore. Hopefully the city can retain these pluses as it grows. Two wheelers are unfortunately also infected with the wrongsidedrivingitis virus, which has spread from its home in Pune to many other cities of Maharashtra.

The streets of Nashik

The Resort:
After around 45 minutes driving through the town, we exited into wine country. After driving past a couple of big name wineries, we arrived at our destination: Regenta Soma Vine Village, located very close to the banks of the dammed up Godavari river (the Gangapur dam).

Nice winding country roads


Posing by the entrance


Vader & Tiago resting

The resort is tastefully done up, with the wine theme pervading all aspects of the place, down to the rooms being named after wine (grapes) like Riesling, Chardonnay etc..
The staff was welcoming, warm and friendly, and were good enough to upgrade us to the pool view rooms. The rooms themselves were spacious and well equipped with (more than the) bare necessities of life.

Brightly colored bottles in the lobby


View from Le Room


Le Room

Infinity Pool. We didn't partake of its pleasures, unfortunately


Poolside tables

After settling in and a very late lunch, we set out to explore the place a little bit. The wine theme continued, as can be seen from the pictures below. The place looked even cooler in the dark, once the lights came on.
The young and older kids all had a good time in the well equipped recreation room, which had a foosball table, Table tennis, Carrom and pool table

It's going to be one BIG party when this guy is opened


A bit hard to swirl this one


The winery from afar


Italian restaurant in the winery


View of one of the vineyards, with seating inside barrels


Lit up at night


The felt escaped unharmed


Having fun..

Next morning we all woke up early and took a walk down to the lake side, seeing the sunrise and breathing in the (somewhat) clean rural air, mixed with the obligatory smell of burning wood/leaves.

Sunrise by the Godavari


Marigold and tomatoes




Wildflowers

A hearty breakfast was followed by a pleasant and informative wine tasting session, where the resident wine expert graciously showed us (and many others) around the wine making area and guided us through a nice wine tasting session. Some of the whites were nice, and there was also a pseudo-wine made from pomegranate for those with an extra long sweet tooth.
Shelby, Cobra & I then bicycled around the resort for 30 minutes or so, and I rediscovered muscles that I had long forgotten about. Was great to be back on 2 wheels after many years.

Bottles are for show


These barrels are for the export oriented wines


Machine for removing the skin and seeds from grapes


Fermentation tank


Can't wait to start the tasting (only one out of the above 4)

A long and lazy lunch later, we departed, and once again the drive was smooth till we entered Pune, and we again had to battle our way through traffic before reaching home.

Politicians everywhere are inconsiderate fools


Vader and us taking a break en route

A short and sweet weekend, and both the destinations are highly recommended.

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[sach.sri]

Wow! came across this TL and it has the 3 things that I really love - Driving, Ancient Temple, Vineyard

Awesome writeup - and I 100% echo your thoughts! we dont do enough to maintain and promote our heritage and tourism! OH, the magnificence; just waiting to be explored!

Originally Posted by Mustang Sammy

We have so much to see and experience: natural beauty, history, religion and culture, arts and crafts, wide open expressways to winding country roads

We just don’t appreciate it, and do a dirt poor job of promoting and maintaining our tourist destinations.

One of these examples is described in this travelogue. It is the Gondeshwar Mandir, which is a Shiva Temple from the 11th-12th Century, in the town of Sinnar, 50km south of Nashik.

One thing that is simply amazing and surprising and gave me goose bumps is - when i looked at these pictures, it took me back to Khajuraho / Padhavali / Bateshwar

The plan / architecture / details - are EXACTLY SAME. How did this happen? In 11th Century, two temple complexes 1000 KMs apart having exact same layout / architecture / construction

a couple of pics below to buttress my point above







see the similarity?!

The mystery is how did this happen?
Did they have a central college that taught building temples and had a standard template and all of these builders graduated from there? or was there a travelling groups of builders / architects that went from place to place and took a cookie cutter approach?

or were these pre-fabricated in a "factory" kind of setting and transported and assembled by a local band of assemblers?

I can think of so many things - all fantastical - none fitting the current narrative of the ancients being backward

More and more i want to believe the "Ancient Aliens" kind of series looking at our history, monuments and heritage.

Would love to get my hands on any materials explaining this and many more mysteries like this. Does our academia even care for what lies in our literal backyard?

P.S:- in case interested, my TL for that trip (still in progress) -

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...s-chambal.html (Hidden Gems Series: The marvels of Chambal!)

[kratswat]

What could have motivated someone to destroy such beauty?


It is shameful and heartbreaking to see such magnificent monuments that hold value across historical, cultural, religious, architectural perspectives still bear scars from historical wounds. I don't understand why the Indian state cannot do a better job of this despite all its might!

[Tiago_Boy]

I took a similar route recently. Visited the windmill farm along with stay at the tree house, Sula. We concluded the journey with Tirambakeshwar Temple. Here are some of the pictures.