Pune, India

3 April, 2016

I am very fortunate that in my job I have the opportunity to travel around the world. This past April I travelled to India for the first time. Most of the time was spent in meetings (and eating some of the most delicious curries!). But, our first day was a Sunday and that was a bit of a free day. A colleague of mine had arranged for a short 2-3 hour tour of the city of Pune, arranged by the hotel. I joined her on this trip and took my little Fujifilm X100s with me.

The pictures here are mostly taken from that little tour of the city, although I’ve taken the liberty to scatter some images taken with my iPhone through the week.

On our first stop, we visited the Pataleshwar Caves, a temple cut out of the rock sometime around the 8th century. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu god, Shiva.

This was a small oasis of tranquility in what is a large, bustling, busy and at times loud city. People in the grounds and in the temple were either praying or sitting silently in contemplation.

Next on the list was a 18th century fort, Shaniwar Wada. Strange to see a fort right in the middle of this city, but of course the city has grown greatly in recent decades. According to its wikipedia entry, the fort was destroyed in the 19th century and just the walls remain.

We also visited a temple dedicated to Ganesh in the middle of the city, and finally the Aga Khan Palace where Ghandi was kept under house arrest. Unfortunately, I don’t have many photos from those visits because it was just too busy and the crowds too heavy at the temple, and by the time we had got to the Palace my camera batteries had died – properly died! Even the spare I had on me would not work and, as I later found out, neither could be charged.

The image on the left is outside the temple. People come to stalls for flowers as offerings in the temple, and leave their shoes before entering. The image on the right is one of the sites of the ashes of Mahatma Ghandi, at the Aga Khan Palace.

I very much enjoyed my visit to Pune and I do hope that I will return. Here are some more images from this fascinating place.