Satara: Ajinkyatara Again

6 July Morning

Today I went to Ajinkyatara again with few friends, this time from Maruti Temple side. Recently the Municipality has installed the name boarding on the top of Ajinkyatara. Here is a view of this. You'll be surprised to know that this photo was taken from the terrace of my home (I live near S.T.Stand), with full optical zoom of course. Next photo is taken when I actually reached bottom of the fort at the end of journey. When you see from there bottom, part of letters gets covered.

So, we started at around 9 o'clock. You can hardly see sun these days, sky is always cloudy so you can leave for the fort anytime. This is how stairs to Maruti Temple look like.

Here is Maruti temple and garden near it (which I had mentioned in previous blog also).

The stairs end at a pukka road (see pic). This road will bring you to the front gate of the fort. It is a very nice road, trees on both the side. There is a shiva temple on the way.

On the way I decided to take photos of few familiar places in Satara. So here is Jala-Mandir (where Maharaje lives), Rajwada and New English School (my school!).

This is the front gate. When you enter the gate, on the right hand side you can find this board which gives history of Ajinkyatara. (click on photos to zoom)

After this you follow the stairs for 2-3 mins. You'll reach on the top of fort. There are two temples Maruti (the 1 in back, this is a big one with shed) and Shiva.

If you follow the route on south edge of fort, at one point of time you'll find another ancient shiva temple (Saptarshi) on your left hand side. This is perhaps the most ancient temple on this fort. Now it is renovated so it looks good. A very divine place.

Previously I had talked about Southern Entrance (Dakshin Darwaja). Well, there are actually two gates here and stairs in between. One of the gate faces west and other one faces east. (For first pic, you'll probably have to zoom by clicking it to notice the gate/dwar)

After this I went to Untachi Path hill range while climbing down. We were sitting there for sometime when I noticed something. Far away on the other side of Satara it was raining. (click photo to zoom). Actually it was raining at two places/hills. At one of them (right one) it was raining although there was sun. I have also captured a small insect and a flower. Really nature is truly amazing and beautiful at micro as well as macro level. :-)