Maharashtra Region Guide

Maharashtra holds India’s largest city, its most extraordinary rock-cut architecture, and a range of hills that decided the country’s history more than once.

Ajanta and Ellora are the reason to come. At Ajanta, thirty Buddhist caves cut into a horseshoe gorge between the second century BC and the fifth century AD contain the finest surviving ancient painting in India. At Ellora, thirty-four caves of three religions stand side by side, and the Kailasa temple was carved downward out of a single hillside — a full temple, courtyards and all, excavated rather than built.

Mumbai is the counterweight: colonial Gothic, Art Deco, Bollywood, and the densest concentration of ambition in India.

And the Western Ghats run down the state — hill forts, monsoon waterfalls and a biodiversity hotspot.

Ajanta and Ellora

From Aurangabad. Ajanta first: thirty caves in a river gorge, with the painted ceilings and walls of caves 1, 2, 16 and 17 the reason to come — bodhisattvas, court scenes and Jataka stories in pigment that has survived since the fifth century. Then Ellora, where Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves sit in a single line along a cliff, and the Kailasa temple was cut down from the rock over a century and a half, removing an estimated 200,000 tonnes of stone.

Mumbai

The Gateway of India and the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco ensembles that are UNESCO-listed; Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus; the Dhobi Ghat; Elephanta Island’s cave temples an hour by boat; and Marine Drive at dusk.

The Ghats

Hill forts — Raigad, Sinhagad, Rajgad — associated with Shivaji, reached on foot; the hill stations at Matheran and Mahabaleshwar; and the Kaas plateau’s flowering in late monsoon.

Wine and wildlife

Nashik for Indian wine, and Tadoba and Pench for some of India’s more reliable tiger sightings.

Maharashtra combines a fiercely held regional identity with India’s most cosmopolitan city, and the tension between them is part of the state’s character.

Shivaji

The seventeenth-century Maratha ruler Shivaji is the presiding figure of Maharashtrian identity — a guerrilla commander who built a kingdom out of hill forts against the Mughal empire, and whose statue stands in every town. He is genuinely revered, and also politically contested: several parties claim him, and criticism of him is not received lightly.

Mumbai

Built on land reclaimed from seven islands, transformed by the cotton trade and then by cinema and finance. It draws migrants from every state, speaks a street Hindi of its own, and has a self-image of relentless work and tolerance that coexists with serious communal tension and staggering inequality.

Bollywood

The Hindi film industry is based here and produces more films than any other in the world. It is a genuine cultural force across South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Ambedkar

B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit jurist who drafted India’s constitution, was Maharashtrian, and his conversion to Buddhism in 1956 with several hundred thousand followers made the state a centre of Dalit Buddhism.

Ajanta’s paintings are extremely fragile. Flash photography is prohibited, lighting is deliberately dim, and the number of people in a cave at once is limited. The pigments survived fifteen centuries because the caves were abandoned and forgotten; they are now degrading from humidity and handling. Follow the rules without needing to be asked.

Mumbai’s slum tours are a genuine ethical question. Some are run by organisations that employ residents and put profits into local work; others are voyeurism. If you go, choose one with a clear community stake and no photography policy, and think about why you are going.

Water is a live crisis in Maharashtra. Marathwada suffers repeated drought and farmer distress, while sugarcane irrigation consumes a disproportionate share. It is worth understanding rather than treating as background.

In the Ghats, stay on trails, avoid the monsoon waterfall selfie spots where people drown every year, and do not litter the forts.

November to February is the season: dry, warm days and cool nights, and the only comfortable stretch for Mumbai and the caves.

March to May is very hot — above 40°C inland, and Mumbai humid and draining. The caves are punishing.

June to September is the monsoon, and it is spectacular in the Western Ghats: the whole range turns green, hundreds of waterfalls appear, and the hill stations at Lonavala and Matheran fill with people from Mumbai. It is also when the city floods, trains stop and the humidity is total.

August or September brings Ganesh Chaturthi, the state’s overwhelming festival and the single best reason to time a visit.

Kaas plateau flowers for a few weeks in late August and September.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Mumbai is the expensive part by a wide margin; everywhere else in the state is inexpensive.