Few of us ever give a glance to the girl next door. In fact I can bet the phrase came from a writer who smelt of arrogance coming from high nose or breed. Kanheri caves was treated as such by me until recently. I consider myself an avid traveler – we take at least half a dozen short and long vacations in a year which makes me qualify for the designation, at least in India. But my high nose on travel eluded me of this beautiful piece married in architectural and natural surroundings less than 15 kms from my house for more than 10 years of my stay stay in Mumbai: The Kanheri Caves.
Kanheri caves are six km from the main gate of the Borivili (Sanjay Gandhi) National Park, which by itself is a nice one day affair especially if you are either too young to be dating or old enough to have young pre-teen children. Once you enter the park, you have a choice of either going on the way where 90% of the population goes (leads to the toy trains, lion/tiger safari, boat rides, park etc) or the less trodden one that leads to Kanheri caves. If you take the later, especially during or immediately after monsoons, keep your windows down and enjoy the fresh air. On both sides are lush green trees and the road is good given I visited at the fag end of monsoons. There are several streams on the way where you could park your car and stop by for a picnic. Once you reach Kanheri caves, you are greeted by hungry monkeys who rule the entry stairs that lead up to the caves. Once on the stairs you are advised not to carry any food in your hands unless you want to be befriended by them in a violent way.
Entry ticket is rupees five and immediately after you enter the gate you can see the first cave. There are 109 caves in total as you keep moving up but cave number 3, 11, 28 and a few others are more significant than the others. These include a congregation hall with huge pillars with a stupa. Some of the caves date back to over 2000 years! At one point in time they served as Buddhist monasteries and were meant for living, study, and meditation. If you have been to monasteries earlier and towns and villages that revolve around them, you can probably understand why the caves are built in this way. It seems to me that Buddhists as people liked to live close by and hence built these caves so close to each other – just a call away. You can see this in Leh/Ladhakh and also in Bhutan – both of which are primarily Buddhist dominated societies. There you can see most houses erected on a hill very close to each other. In a way these look like a large palace (in many cases they are!). Kanheri is just like that, but hundreds of years older without any settlers…
When you walk up the stairs, you can see the beautiful green surroundings of the park. If you sit there for a while you may even forget that just a few kms away is a human jungle called Mumbai where humans are cramming noisily on the roads.
So why did I find Kanheri so nice? One, it was clean. We Indians are so used to seeing heritage sites and temples in ruins and filled with filth that you are caught unawares when you see a decently clean heritage site, right next door, that people seldom visit (perhaps that is why it is clean?)
The other reason I liked this visit was that I had a lovely companion with myself – my soon to be four year old daughter. First she was excited to see so many monkeys trying to steal her cucumber and then she climbed with me till the 20th cave. We promised to come back to complete the ascend some day soon.
Third, its all in nature’s lap. The caves are on a hill which is surrounded by the park. This gives it an exquisite feel.
Finally, I can still not comprehend that such a clean, beautiful, historical heritage site was so close by and I did not appreciate it for so many years. Just like the girl next door!
