Dharashiv Caves

Marathwada Circuit- 1200 Kms, 7 forts, 2 Caves
Day 1: Pune-Madha-Paranda-Tuljapur (360 Kms)
Day 2: Dharshiv Caves
Day 3: Tuljapur-Ausa-Kharosa-Udgir-Nanded (280 Kms)
Day 4: Nanded-Kandhar-Dharur-Kunthaligiri (290 Kms)
Day 5: Kunthaligiri-Kharda-Bhadurgad AKA Dharmaveergad-Pune (265 Kms)

Type: Caves
Base Village: Dharashiv
Where:270 KMs from Pune, 25Kms from Tuljapur
Route: Off Osmanbad
Time visited: somewhere in 2008, August 2011
Time to see around: 1 hour
How to visit: The Dharashiv caves are situated 6-7 km away from Osmanabad city in Balaghat Mountains. A lonely tar road in dry arid landscape goes right till caves. The place is all isolated and late evenings should be avoided.

There are total 7 caves, carved probably in 9^th or 10th century. The main area has 4 caves and Shiva temple .

A concrete staircase leads you directly to this. 2 of them have idols Jain thirthankars while the rest of them seem to be empty.

The 4th cave has beautiful statue of Parshwanath Bhagwan with a huge snake and carving on the top.

There are 3 caves on the left and a muddy trail leads to this.

One cave is slightly downwards and you have wade through grass to reach there. Unfortuantely I missed the last cave here which had some carving of krishna.

The main caves are all now painted white, which gives all our budding artist a plain canvas to scribble names and draw dirty pictures! Last time I visted there was a security guard posted, he was nowhere to be seem. Hopefully this is treasured for next generation too…