Temples & ghats of Wai

The comparison with Varanasi is about form rather than scale: a town built facing its river, with stone ghats stepping down to the water and temples along the length of them, used daily for bathing, ritual and conversation.

Most of what stands today dates from the eighteenth century, when the Peshwas and their administrators funded temple building here. Wai sat on an important route and had the patronage to build in stone.

The best known temple in Wai and the image most associated with the town. The name means "large Ganpati", and the seated idol inside is exactly that - substantially bigger than you expect from outside, carved and brightly painted, in a hall that was built around it.

It sits on Ganpati Ghat facing the river. Ganesh Chaturthi, in August or September, is when the temple and the ghat are at their most alive, and also when they are busiest by a wide margin.

The more rewarding of the two if you care about architecture. A Shiva temple in the Hemadpanti tradition, with detailed stone carving on the exterior, a stone Nandi facing the shrine, and proportions that reward walking around the outside rather than only stepping inside.

It is quieter than the Dholya Ganpati and often nearly empty on a weekday morning. Mahashivratri, usually February or March, is the exception.

Seven principal ghats run along Wai's riverfront, each historically associated with a different quarter of the town and its temples. They are connected enough to walk end to end in about half an hour at an unhurried pace.

They are still in daily use - washing, bathing, sitting in the early light. This is the thing to see in Wai, and it happens between roughly six and eight in the morning. Later in the day the ghats are simply empty stone.

Photography of the buildings is generally fine; photographing people at the ghats is not, unless you ask first. Bathing and ritual are private acts happening in a public place, and the difference matters.

Five kilometres out, Menavali Ghat is the grandest surviving example of the same tradition - two temples, a full riverside ghat and Nana Phadnavis's wada, built as one composition.

If you are building a morning around this, the one-day itinerary runs the ghats, the temples and Menavali in sequence before the heat. Staying in Wai overnight is what makes the early start possible.