A Trip To Kolhapur: An Ode To Summer Vacations We All Miss And Cherish

Thinking about Indian cities that were named after demons, one’s mind instantly goes to Mysore or perhaps even Jalandhar, but less popular city in that list is Kolhapur. The city was named after Kolhasur, a demon or asura who once terrorised local folks and, as a consequence, was slained by Goddess Mahalaxmi. His last audacious wish? To have the city named after him.

It was a long car ride for my seven-year-old self, and my beloved Nanu was telling me stories of Kolhapur. The city that had been my home for the past two months; the city we were leaving behind as we headed towards Pune airport to catch our flight back home. Summer holidays, as all good things, did not last very long.

The distance from Kolhapur to Pune is around 6 hours. We took a stop on the way in Satara for breakfast. We had begun our journey early at around 7 am, and in attendance were my mother, me, and my grandfather travelling along with the driver.

Recalling every time he’d narrated this particular story to me before, I proclaimed, with pride, to show everyone in the car how well I’d remembered them: “Didn’t goddess Mahalaxmi descend upon Earth because she was mad at her husband?”

Having heard the story a million times already, yet still never getting bored, I'd felt a newfound appreciation for them. I didn’t properly understand words like tradition back then. I just liked how these stories belonged to us, and that I could complete them before Nanu finished his sentence. Looking back now, I realise how tradition survives in such stories as they’re told again and again and passed through generations.

Now, as per the legend, Goddess Laxmi once got really angry when Sage Bhrigu's foot had struck Lord Vishnu in the chest. Although he was forgiven, the Goddess had felt insulted by the act since she resided in the Lord's chest. Out of anger, she had decided to settle in Kolhapur in the form of Ambabai. The Lord had to take another form to reunite with his wife, and though that is another story, what result such that the journey to sacred Tirupati Balaji, a popular pilgrimage, isn’t considered complete until one visits the Ambabai temple of Kolhapur, where the goddess is said to have resided.

The pictures of Kolhasur and Mahalaxmi danced across my eyes as I grew lost in these imaginations. In my head, the Goddess was impossibly tall, calm, angry, beautiful all at once; her presence was towering. Kolhasur, in comparison, shrank into something smaller and darker, almost shuddering. I didn’t know what an 'asur' was meant to look like apart from the stone carvings and storybook images I had seen, so my mind preferred to make its own version. As I watched, the endless stretches of sugarcane fields give way to the rolling green folds of the Sahyadri mountains, driving towards Pune. The rhythm of the road slowly pulled me into drowsiness until, like a cue, I heard a voice, "Come on, let’s take a break at this petrol pump and freshen up.”

Stories, Stones, And The Goddess At The Centre

As we washed our faces and stretched our legs, my mind slipped back, not to the road ahead or even the endless fields and pretty mountains I had been seeing, but to the temple I had visited quite a lot over the break.

The temple exemplifies the architectural style known as 'Hemandpanthi' in ancient India. The walls of the temple complex are adorned with exquisite carvings and astonishing sculptures. The cool feel of the basalt stones under my fingertips felt almost like a silent witness to the ages gone by, grounding me in the temple's enduring history. The complex comprises five towers and a central hall, built so you can see the Goddess’s statue from afar, arranged in a way to offer different levels of darshan through a series of progressively arranged rooms and halls. Festivals are celebrated here with great joy, especially Navratri, which doesn't need announcements; it simply seems to take over, involving spectacular events, with the Goddess beautifully adorned daily in different forms. Huge crowds coming flock in to see the large-scale festivities. The city seems to move with the Goddess’s rhythm.

Still quite enraptured in the visualisation of these stories and the temple's grandeur, I was reminded how, as a kid, my attraction there were the pendas (Kandi Pedhe, a unique, often drier, milk-based Indian sweet) they sold; nothing quite like them can be found elsewhere. Such was my penchant for them that every alternate day I would wake up at the crack of dawn to go with my Nanu, a regular to the temple. Want to hear something even more unbelieveable? Even at such an ungodly hour, the place would be swamped with crowds, and by the time we would finish our darshan, the heat would be so unbearable outside that standing barefoot on that stone floor for longer than a few minutes would guarantee burns.

Between Darshan And Departure, The City In Motion

Outside Ambabai, the calm dissolves into movement. Small, not-quite-permanent shops line the road, selling flowers, fruits, coconuts, and boxes of sweets meant for prasad. There are penda shops everywhere, each shop claiming its own version, though somehow they all seemed to taste the same and never quite the same anywhere else. Footwear stalls overflow with chappals; sari shops display piles meant to be taken inside for blessings, with the quiet hope that the sari returned might be different from the one you offered. Families step out looking lighter, conversations softer now that darshan is done. Around the main temple, smaller shrines sit almost casually—Ganpati, Hanuman, Shiva, Vishnu, the Navgrahas, and so many more—each with its own pundit waiting patiently. The crowds spill across the street, autos and rickshaws edge forward, food stalls at the corners, and people like us walk the last stretch on foot because parking any closer is simply impossible. That calm, almost chaotic rhythm isn’t limited to just the temple and environs. It seems to run through the entire city. Mornings there start early, with shop shutters rolling up, milk cans clanking, and scooters cutting through half-awake streets. By the time the evenings roll up, everything is in full swing: people selling ganna-juice (sugarcane juice) on their carts, dogs being walked on the streets, autos and scooties honking as a part of the active chaos. Just as I was lost in these reveries, a loud, startling honk snapped me out; we were midway and presently stopping for lunch.

Leaving, Before I Knew What Leaving Meant

Looking at the humble dal-khichdi I had ordered, I realised how much I would miss this food back at home.
Whether it be the simple home-cooked varan-bhaat, zunka-bhakri, my Nani’s sweet ladoos and puran poli, or the local spicy misal pav shop dishing out endless refills on a plate paid for, flavours that never quite translate outside this city, everything felt irreplaceable. Even the Alphonso mangoes in the crate I was carrying back home somehow felt tied to the place itself. The many food spots we explored—from the paani puri stall serving flavoured waters of imli (tamarind) and pudina (mint), to the poha joint that transformed an unassuming breakfast into something layered with flavour, and even the local favourite, Ashish’s Sandwich Stall—were all memorable. Perpetually crowded, the stall’s bhaiya still found time to smile and greet us in Marathi, the local dialect, whose stronger, more traditional cadence lent the language an upfront, lived-in warmth. Oh, and the ice cream and juice shop we used to go to, without fail, after every swimming session, ordering my favourite ice cream cocktail glass and fighting for those delicious jellies—happy times.

Somewhere between the last spoon of khichdi and the empty plate, I realised how much I would miss my regular temple visits, Nani’s warm hugs, petty squabbles with my cousin, the colony where each neighbour felt like a part of this enormous family extending virtually to all of the city we all belonged to, the society's garden where children grew up playing—with the tower in the middle, swings, slides, a sandpit and more. The way Kolhapur seemed to wear its history openly, the statues of Tararani and Shahu Maharaj on roads which we passed every day. Just there, like reminders of the kind of strength and history the city seems to carry with pride. The limited options of restaurants and clothing stores? Just adding on to the magic (the complete lack of Domino's seeming a bit unimaginable to me). Kolhapur might be a city that isn’t very widely known, though it has recently gained recognition due to a controversial incident involving a luxury brand launching sandals similar to India's GI-tagged Kolhapuri chappal, and it may just be defined as a city located in Southwest Maharashtra on the banks of the Panchganga river, surrounded by the picturesque Sahayadri mountains. Yet, to the seven-year-old me, waving a silent goodbye as the car restarted and we left, it felt like so much more than that.

Saachi Sehra is a Class 11 student who writes about travel through memory, emotion, and the small moments that make the places linger.