Places
Ajanta CavesHeritageUNESCOChhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad)
Thirty rock-cut Buddhist monuments in a horseshoe gorge above the Waghur, cut in two phases — one around the second century BCE to the first century CE, the second concentrated in roughly 460–480 CE — and holding the largest surviving body of ancient Indian painting. Inscribed by UNESCO in 1983. The caves are administratively in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, which is Marathwada, not Khandesh; they lie on the Khandesh-facing scarp of the Ajanta range, about 59 km from Jalgaon and about 104 km from Aurangabad, and almost everyone reaches them from the Khandesh side, which is why they are so often filed here. Ellora, in the same district, is likewise Marathwada.
Best time: November–February; closed on Mondays.. Getting there: Rail to Jalgaon or Bhusawal, then road to Fardapur and a shuttle bus to the gorge.
ToranmalHillNandurbar
A plateau at about 1,150 m in the Satpura, the only hill station in the region, with Yashwant lake, the Gorakhnath temple and a wildlife sanctuary around it. Its Mahashivratri fair draws pilgrims from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat alike, which is a fair description of the whole slope's orientation.
Best time: October–February. Getting there: About 55 km from Shahada by road; the last climb is steep and slow.
UnapdevPilgrimageJalgaon (Chopda taluka)
A hot sulphur spring at the foot of the Satpura, discharged through a carved cow-mouth spout into a stone bathing tank, with a small temple and a fair. Nearby Sunapdev and Nunapdev complete a set of three springs on the same fault-fed system.
Best time: November–February.
Patnadevi and Gautala Autramghat SanctuaryNatureJalgaon (Chalisgaon taluka)
A temple in a wooded gorge of the Satmala range with a seasonal waterfall, inside the Gautala Autramghat sanctuary. The mathematician Bhaskara II is placed at Patan nearby by an inscription attributed to his grandson Changadeva, which makes this the working address of the man who wrote the Lilavati in 1150.
Best time: September–February.
ErandolHeritageJalgaon
A small town holding the structure known locally as Pandavwada — a large pillared hall of medieval date, later used as a mosque, whose original identity and dating have been contested and litigated. Erandol is also the taluka for Padmalaya, a Ganesh shrine of long standing.
ChangdevPilgrimageJalgaon (Muktainagar taluka)
A Hemadpanti-style temple at the confluence of the Tapi and the Purna, associated with the yogi Changdev of the Varkari narrative — the figure to whom Dnyaneshwar's Changdev Pasashti is addressed. He is a different person from Changadeva the astronomer, Bhaskara II's grandson, who is connected with Patan across the district; Khandesh has two Changdevs and they are regularly conflated.
MuktainagarPilgrimageJalgaon
Formerly Edlabad, renamed for Muktabai, the youngest of the four siblings of the Dnyaneshwar household and a composer of abhangas in her own right, who is remembered in local tradition as having disappeared in a storm near here. A palkhi and annual observance mark the site, and it is the region's principal claim in the Varkari geography.
Yaval Wildlife SanctuaryWildlifeJalgaon
Dry deciduous teak forest on the Satpura slope, contiguous with forest in Madhya Pradesh, holding leopard, sloth bear and a substantial bird list. Its value is as a corridor rather than as a destination.
Best time: November–February.
PrakashaPilgrimageNandurbar
A temple town on the Tapi at its confluence with the Gomai, called Dakshin Kashi locally, with a cluster of old stone temples on the bank and a Kartik bathing fair. It is the region's principal river pilgrimage.
SarangkhedaHeritageNandurbar
Host of one of India's largest horse fairs, held around Dattatreya Jayanti in Margashirsha, where Marwari and Kathiawari horses are traded in the thousands beside the Dattatreya temple on the Tapi. It has been promoted in recent years as the Chetak Festival.
Best time: December–January, for the fair..
ThalnerHeritageDhule
The first capital of the Faruqi sultans of Khandesh, on the Tapi, with a group of brick-and-stone royal tombs of the fifteenth century that are among the least visited significant monuments in Maharashtra.
Asirgarh FortHeritageBurhanpur, Madhya Pradesh
A hill fort on the Satpura commanding the pass between the Tapi and Narmada valleys, called the key of the Deccan for exactly that reason. Akbar's long siege of 1600–01 ended the Faruqi sultanate and brought Khandesh into the Mughal empire.
BurhanpurHeritageBurhanpur, Madhya Pradesh
Founded as the Faruqi capital in 1399 and later the Mughal headquarters for the Deccan. Its Shahi Qila, the hammam with painted ceilings, and above all the Khooni Bhandara — an early seventeenth-century underground water system of tunnels and shafts drawing groundwater to the city, parts of which still function — make it the most substantial urban heritage in the Tapi valley. Mumtaz Mahal died here in 1631 and was interred across the river before being moved to Agra.
BhusawalUrbanJalgaon
A railway town rather than a historic one — one of Central Railway's largest junctions and divisional headquarters, with locomotive sheds and marshalling yards, built to move cotton and now moving bananas. It explains more about how this region works than most of its monuments.
JalgaonUrbanJalgaon
The region's largest town, built on banana, cotton, oilseed and gold. Gandhi Teerth, the Gandhi Research Foundation's museum and archive on the edge of town, is an unexpectedly serious research institution for a district headquarters.
AmalnerHeritageJalgaon
A mill town on the Bori with two claims out of proportion to its size — the Indian Institute of Philosophy, endowed there in 1916 and publisher of the Philosophical Quarterly, where Sane Guruji taught; and the vegetable-oil mill founded in 1945 as Western India Vegetable Products, which is the company that became Wipro.