Cantonment
Colonial Chronicles: A Walk through Camp
कॅम्पमधली वसाहतकालीन पुणे
Two miles and two centuries from the peths. Basalt churches, wrought-iron verandahs, Irani bakeries and East Street — the other Pune, built by an empire and kept alive by everyone who came after it.
After 1817 the British built their cantonment east of the old city, and in doing so built a second Pune with its own street grid, its own architecture and its own food.
This walk takes in the churches and bungalows, the deep verandahs and louvred shutters designed for a climate the builders found trying, and the commercial street that grew up to serve them. We look at how Parsi, Irani, Bohri, Goan Catholic and Jewish families made the cantonment theirs — and at the bakeries and cafés that are the most delicious surviving evidence.
It is a good walk for understanding why Pune feels like two cities stitched together, and why the seam is so easy to find once you know what to look for.
On this walk
- Cantonment planning: why the streets run the way they do
- Colonial bungalow architecture and its climate logic
- Churches, clubs and the institutions of garrison life
- The Parsi, Irani and Bohri communities of Camp
- Classic Pune food joints — and the history in them
Keep walking
Other routes
In & Around Shaniwar Peth
One of Pune's oldest neighbourhoods, founded under Murtaza Nizam Shah, and one of its least explored. Quiet lanes, magnificent wadas and temples the Peshwas built.
Sarasbaug: Heritage & Nature
Everyone in Pune has been to Sarasbaug. Almost nobody knows it was built as a lake — or that it is named after the cranes Sawai Madhavrao released onto its water.
Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum
Twenty thousand objects of everyday Indian life, gathered by one man over six decades. We take a themed route through it — so you leave having actually seen something, rather than everything.