Wishing well at Akloli Kund.
Around Mumbai.
Akloli Kund Hot Water Springs. Next to Vajreshwari
Not too far from the city of Bhiwandi, the industrial city, north of Mumbai you will find a small village filled with sanatoriums. They are mostly run by and for Gujarati and Kutchi communities. That's because this village on a bend of the Tansa River that supplies water to Greater Mumbai and has bubbling hot springs. The water from the main spring is channeled into three large tiled ponds that you can see in these images. You can't jump into the bubbling spring but the it spills over into three ponds with different degrees of temperature. I could stand in the hottest one pretty comfortably and I must confess that my feet never felt better! But most people seemed to prefer the cooler ones. Here are some girls in hot water wearing India's national dress - the nightie.
Like all good geographical features that are occupied by people who cannot look behind worshiping some hidden power they imagine behind it, this place is dedicated to the down to earth Shiva and shared by the atheistic Jain Tirtankaras and the ashram of a Godman. They do a good job at keeping the place holy and therefore clean. Or we would have people washing their bums in hot water here after a good crap out in the open.
Here's the man who kept shooing away people who walked in with their muddy slippers. May Shiva bless him.
There are two shrines here. The older one shown above to the west of the spring and a more recent one to the North. On the Southern side is an ashram of this godman.
To the east is this wonderful old lamp post, tree and a road that went to the Tansa river front.
You can reach Akloli/Vajreshwari from Vasai from an exit on NH8 or via Bhivandi-Wada road
Here's a useful list of Hot Springs in India (and around the world)
