Ganeshotsav · Diwali · Navratri · Women's Day
Festival Special Walks
सणावाराच्या खास वाटा
Pune is a different city during a festival. We run special walks timed to Ganeshotsav, Diwali, Hanuman Jayanti, Women's Day and World Heritage Week — because some things can only be seen on the day.
A festival is heritage happening in real time, and it is the best possible reason to be on the street at seven in the morning.
Ganeshotsav. The old city during Ganeshotsav is unrecognisable. We walk the manache Ganpati and the great pandals, and talk about how a household ritual became a public movement, and what that did to Pune.
Diwali. We start at the Tulshibaug Ram Mandir and move out through the markets — rangoli colours, flowers, lamps, and the clay forts that Maharashtrian children build for Diwali and nobody else in India does.
Hanuman Jayanti. Pune's old city is full of Maruti temples with wonderful names — Pavtya Maruti, Bhikardas Maruti, Dulya Maruti. We visit a string of them and explain how each got its name.
Women's Day. A walk built around the women of this city: Jijabai, Ahilyabai Holkar, Savitribai Phule, Dr Anandibai Joshi, Pandita Ramabai — different centuries, different fights, the same streets.
Navratri. Nine nights, and a walk through the old city's goddess temples — Tambadi Jogeshwari and the shrines around it — looking at how the festival is kept here.
World Heritage Week. In November we usually do something we do not otherwise offer — a museum route, a monument out of the ordinary run.
Dates are announced on Instagram a couple of weeks ahead. They fill quickly.
On this walk
- Ganeshotsav: manache Ganpati, pandals, and a movement's history
- Diwali: Tulshibaug, the lamp markets and Maharashtra's clay forts
- Hanuman Jayanti: the old city's Maruti temples and their names
- Navratri: the goddess temples of the old city
- Women's Day: Jijabai to Pandita Ramabai, on the streets they used
- World Heritage Week: something out of the ordinary run
From this walk
Keep walking
Other routes
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.
Colonial Chronicles: A Walk through Camp
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.
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.