Bhuleshwar Temple of Shiva near Pune

In the distance on the right Bhuleshwar Temple

A load of sugar cane, rural area to east of Pune, India

Looking west toward Pune, rocky and terraced hills

One afternoon near the end of November my friend Sanjay took me on his motorcycle to see an ancient Hindu temple. He explained it was under protection of the Archaeological Survey of India and was nearly 800 years old. I was excited to get out into the countryside near where I work. From the rooftop you get a clear view of the plateau some 50 km to the south which rises out of the plateau we are on to another level. Between Solapur Road which runs southeast toward the city of Solapur and the plateau is a stretch of undulating grassland which reminds me of parts of the province of Alberta in Canada. 

We followed the highway east for about a half an hour and then Sanjay turned south onto a narrow farm road. A man after my own heart, he wasn’t certain if this was the road he was looking for but it was leading in the right direction and he was fairly certain it would get us where we wanted to go. Our destination was a hill somewhere to the south and east. ‘I think that’s the one’, he pointed to a high outcropping a couple of hill ranges away. I liked the way the man navigates. We’d follow the meandering country roads until we arrived.

On the way we stopped the bike for a break and climbed a hill for the view. A few stones and a tree marked a small shrine at the peak. The sinking sun turned the hazy air pink and orange and across a valley a train pulled out of a tunnel and snaked along the hillside in the distance for a few minutes before disappearing. The trains that pass by are something I always wanted to mention when I write about living on the campus. At night the whistles, brakes, wheels and diesel motors intermittently drown out the sound of the trucks on the nearby highway. As far as I can recall the trains sound the same in India and Canada. The whistle faded and the sun was low on the horizon. We sauntered back down the hill and got the bike rolling.

Stone shrine on hill top near Pune, India

Shortly before dusk we wound our way up the switchback to the top of the hill where Bhuleshwar temple stands. The orange and white telecommunications tower built directly next to the temple and rising far above the turrets provides a strange contrast to the ancient temple. However, it merely serves to emphasize the durability and rugged beauty of the latter, which has been hewn out and built up upon the rock, an extension of the landscape, while the feet of the creaky steel girder tower are merely fastened to the face with bolts, the whole contraption swaying in the wind and rusting a little more each monsoon.

Bhuleshwar Temple just after nightfall

 Cow figure inside Bhuleshwar temple

 The temple is relatively unspectacular from the outside and stands within a squat stone fort which belies the elegance of the ornate inner sanctum of the temple. The figures and designs cut from black basalt, which was transported a great distance and has a very different quality than the surrounding rock, retains the hard edges and delicate detail better than any other stonework of this age I had seen up until that point. Despite centuries of hands touching the figures the figures seemed to show little wear. The faces have been struck from most of the figures by invading Mughal armies but as with the antennae tower, these scars do not diminish the temple’s effect; the few faces which did survive intact allow the imagination to complete the missing ones.

Basalt pillars, way to inner sanctum

While Hampi’s breadth and dramatic setting met and often exceeded my expectations, Bhuleshwar was an unexpected discovery. I was awed by the quality and immaculate state of the carvings and entranced by the echoes of history which haunted the place.