Our trip to Bedsa caves

Here’s our post about Bedsa caves that I had mentioned I would be putting up, in my earlier dusting off the cobwebs entry!

A few weeks ago, we had driven down from Pune towards Kamshet, and subsequently from there to Bedsa caves and Karla caves. While the road to Kamshet is pretty good, the road from there to Bedsa caves is nothing great to talk about. Quite narrow, with a lot of work going on, it wasn’t an easy road to navigate through. It is also quite possible that one will miss the turnoff for the Bedsa caves, so keep a lookout for it, and do not hesitate to ask folks for directions!

In terms of distance, Bedsa caves are about 70 kms away from Pune, and said to be one of the oldest caves in Maharashtra. Located 15 kilometers south of the Kamshet railway station, it forms a triad with the Karla and Bhaja caves, details pertaining to which I shall post later. Right next to the path to the caves lies the village of Bedsa, though I’m not sure whether the caves were named after the village or vice-versa. In case you travel here by a car/ bike, this would be a good place to park your vehicle. Expect a lot of curiosity, inquisitiveness and excitement from the kids in the village!

An interesting tidbit from the online universe mentions that at one time, details about the caves and the entire history of the caves were painted and carved on the walls of the cave. But it so happened that a Senior British Officer was to visit the caves, hence a local officer painted the entire caves and the details were lost behind the paint. The truth of this story is not yet known but still it is an interesting story to listen to.

The approach to the caves requires you to walk on a narrow path adjoining a few fields, followed by climbing several steps (close to about 350-400). Chances are that the caretaker of the place, a bearded gentleman who is an employee of the Archeological Society of India will give you a guided walk-through. A colorful personality, he also takes care of the place, keeping it neat and clean.

Bedsa Caves comprises of two caves – the main cave known as Chaitya, and the other as Vihara. What is interesting about these caves is that the entire cave has been created by scooping out the rock, as opposed to a block by block construction! Imagine the amount of time it would have taken people to literally chisel the entire cave out from one piece of rock!!! Every feature of the cave – right from the door to pillars to windows to the decorations on the walls – has been created by removing the unwanted material around it. Not an easy task, to think in 3-D in those days, and execute on it.

Probably for the first time in such a Buddhist architecture, a horizontally split façade has been used in the main entrance. Instead of a giant horse-shoe shaped main door, the façade has a door at the height of a single floor and a horse shoe shaped window over this door. On either side of this entrance and window are multiple bands of horseshoe windows. Interestingly, the carvings above the door, comprised of a set of interlocked flowers, where at a glance while it would seem that each flower stood on it’s own, on closer inspection, it could be seen that each flower shares a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 6 common petals with the adjoining one.

As tall as a typical two-storied building, the façade has four 25 feet high pillars supporting the roof of the porch, with each pillar having interesting carvings of royal kings and queens sitting on animals such as horses and elephants, right at the top. These in turn are placed atop lotus shaped carvings.

Coming back to the caves, Chaitya, which is the prayer hall, enshrines a beautiful Buddhist Stupa. The wooden ribbed roof (which still exists and hasn’t rotten away!) is supported by orthogonal pillars. Rows of huge pillars stand on either sides of the Chaitya hall and at the center of the semicircular end is the stupa with a protruding lotus bud image carved on the top.

The second cave, which is the Vihara, has a huge center hall with several rooms scooped out of its inner walls. These rooms have beds in them, cut out of the rock, and even shelving to some extent. It also has some carvings on it.

Both caves face east, and I would assume that they would be good to visit during sunrise.

On either side of the caves are water tanks which have been dug on the rock surface. Meshed wooden frames have been installed to protect people from falling into them. These tanks probably collected rainwater, and do so, even today.

To the left of the Chaitya (when you are facing it from the courtyard), there is another cave with an unfinished stupa inside. According to the guide, during the construction of this one, it developed a crack across, and hence was left unfinished.

The courtyard is paved with black stone, same as the ones with which the steps have been made. According to the guide, these stones were procured from Andhra Pradesh, and individually carted up, and took quite a while to lay. The view of the valley from the courtyard is quite nice. There is one particular tree which is literally growing out of the side of the hill, which makes for a very nice picture / photograph.