Fort JadhavGADH was built in 1710 by Shri Pilaji Jadhavrao, a Maratha General in the army of Chattrapati Shahu Maharaj as a residence. Now it is a Heritage resort, owned by Orchid Hotels and can be an excellent getaway for a short trip where you can enjoy the lush greenery, great hospitality and tasty food including Maharashtrian delicacies.
It is located about 35 km from Swargate, Pune onto national highway 965 towards Saswad. For someone like me, who stays on the other side of Pune city i.e. Hinjewadi, there are mutliple options to reach the resort
Option 1: Aundh, University road, Shivajinagar, Camp, Fatima Nagar, get onto NH965, Dive ghat on to Fort Jadhav Gadh. Note that GPS may show a long run on NH965 and then a U turn to get back to the resort, but note that the highway has no formal road divider and hence you can pretty much turn for the Fort from anywhere. You do get to see the ‘श्री विठ्ठल मुर्ती’ (Shree Vitthal Statue) just before you reach the destination.
Option 2: Hinjewadi, Mumbai Bangalore bypass (NH48), Warje, Katraj, continue straight onto NH65 till it joins NH965 near Fursungi, or take right to get into Bopdev ghat, all the way to Saswad and drive back on NH965 to the resort.
Option 3: Hinjewadi, Mumbai Bangalore bypass (NH48), Warje, continue on NH48 (Katraj Bypass), Shinde wadi, take a left onto Khed Shivapur Saswad link road, all the way to Saswad and drive back on NH965 to the resort. The turn onto the link road may seem a like a wrong turn, but trust google map. This link road is narrow at times, but is pretty decent. In fact I realized later that it is better than NH965, at least in construction quality.
We took option 3, as it was mostly highway, even though it is the longest (about 15 Km extra), but in terms of overall time taken, from our home to the resort, it works out to be almost the same. On the way back we had taken Option 1 as we visited Mahadji Shindi Chatri enroute, and realized that this route is definitely very painful, for the quality of the road (real bad in some places) and heavy traffic including trucks.
On reaching the fort, which is about a KM off the highway and enclosed in lot of greenery, you valet park your vehicle and start on your climbing journey, up the fort’s big steps. The fort is not too much visible from long distance. It is not a huge fort, and that makes it easy to remain hidden in the surrounding trees.
As you go up the stone steps, you see the Payatha ethnic restaurant on the left. This is where all the buffet breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner arrangements are done. You do have Chajja, the coffee shop (serves a-la-carta) and Aangan, the courtyard café as other options where you can eat as well. These two are inside the main fort structure.
Climbing up the stone steps you reach the maha dharwaja where you are greeted in traditional style with tutari and dhol being played and also traditional tikka. You can sip on a nice refreshing welcome drink as you do your check-in formalities.
There are variety of rooms available as per your budget and tastes. Do note that Neem Forest Cottage and Chavani Royal Tent are the farthest from the main fort and are situated on extreme end of the lawns. So there is always a long walk, for your meals, to the main fort. Need Forest cottage are near to the organic farm where vegetables are grown, so has a typical smell in that area. Chavani Royal tents are next to the water quarry, from where you can also trek to the small hill behind the fort. They say some animals like dear occasionally visit the quarry for drinking water. These tent rooms, are the farthest from the fort.
All other rooms are within the fort, and to reach them you climb another set of just about 7–8 steps, but these are pretty high and uneven in height (by design and slow the invading forces in case of breach of the maha darwaja). Kholi and Hill view Dalaan are towards Chajja cafe with Hill view rooms being on first floor, offering you view of the sprawling lawns and the hill behind the fort. On the other side, near the Kund darwaja are the Varsa, Darbari, and Bajirao suite. You go climb more steps and go inside Kund Darwaja to reach to the swimming pool and more steps to get to the Maharani and Maharaja suites, which housed the Rani and Raja in the glorious days. The Maharaja suit being topmost.
There are lots of activities to be done, of which some are complimentary and some paid. You would be given an activity list and also a time table explaining all this in detail, so that you can plan your stay accordingly. Along with all the activities, the prime attraction is the audio tour of the fort that takes you all across the fort via 27 points. You get a headphone and an audio device on which you play the recordings based on the point you are at. The audio is available in english, hindi and marathi. I felt the narration was really well prepared, giving a very good understanding of the important, background etc. of each point. The best point is probably point 5, which is the Dungeons and Tunnels, where prisoners were kept (in light less dungeons), and acts as their wine cellar today and also the Tunnels. The longest tunnel is about 20 km, which goes all the best to Purandar fort. A shorter, about 9 km tunnel goes to some nearby lake and the shortest leads just outside the fort walls.
Points 1 to 13, take you all around the fort and points 14 to 26 are all in Aai Museum. We had gone to the museum just after breakfast around 9.30 am. No one else was there at the museum and Tukaram ji, the fort guide was free. He spent lot of time with us, explaining about all the different artifacts in a very nice and humous manner, giving examples from the era gone by and contrasting with what we have today. Point 27 takes you back to the maha darwaja from where the tour starts. It takes about 1 hr to complete the tour end to end.
Some of the other interesting things are the closing/opening ceremony of maha darwaja. It happens twice a day. 9.30 in the morning and 6.30 in evening. the darwaja is closed for 10 min and then reopened. Being a resort, they cannot keep it closed, else in earlier days once the door would close at 6.30 pm, it would open only in the morning. if anyone wanted to go in or out, there is a smaller door that has to be used.
Towards the back of the fort, in the lawns, there is a Ganesha temple. Aarti is performed twice a day and it involves all those present there. Everyone gets into the inner sanctum and does the aarti by turns. Aarti is performed at 8.30 am and then at 7.00 pm and takes about 10 min. It was very nice experience. We participated in the evening aarti on both days.
The fort’s backyard has huge lawn and you can make good use of it to play outdoor games. Carrying cricket kit, badminton set, football etc. would be a good idea. You can off-course swim also in the temperature controlled pool, and also book your spa sitting.
Overall we had a great experience and am sure everyone who comes here enjoys. The only thing to worry about are the high and uneven stone steps. Need to be careful when walking on them and if you have knee problem then it would be a bit of challenge. Unfortunately there isn’t much of senior citizen support either at this place. One additional aspect that is a bit strange is that the luggage storage and changing space provision (big mirror) is all inside the bathroom (which is hence, very big), making it a bit difficult for people to get ready while someone is using the bathroom.
The room rates, like all places vary a lot during weekdays and weekends and also on special occasions. So need to plan accordingly.
On the way back we stopped at the Vitthal Statue for a bit. Construction work was in progress here. From here, we went to Mahadji Shindi Chatri. There is ample parking outside and it has a nominal Rs 10 entry ticket. There is a huge verandha all around the central temple. Fortunately you can walk on this with your footwear on, else it would be real difficult in summer.
From here it was back to home and end of a wonderful trip.