Pandavgad

Pandavgad, also called Pandugad, rises to 4,177 ft about four miles north-west of Wai in Satara district. From afar it looks like a square fort walled by natural scarps of black rock. A footpath turns north from Bhoganv, a village west of Wai with a memorial to the 15th-century Sanskrit poet Vaman Pandit.

Tradition credits the fort to the Silahara chief Bhoja II of Panhala in the late 12th century. A Bijapur officer held it around 1648, Shivaji took it in 1673 and it passed to Aurangzeb's officers in 1701. In 1713 Balaji Vishvanath, later the first Peshwa, sheltered here on Shahu's orders while fleeing Chandrasen Jadhav, and the British took it in April 1818. On a spur near Dhavdi village are the Pandavgad caves: a flat-roofed chaitya with a stupa, a second small shrine, and an eight-celled vihara with a verandah and bed shelf, still in good condition.