We visited Chafal on last Saturday. Chafal is a Village in Patan Taluka in Satara District of Maharashtra. It is said that the village got its name Chafal because of the temple named Chafeshwar Mahadev in the village. This place has a great importance in the life work of Samarth Ramdas. Samarth Ramdas built many temples of Maruti from Mahabaleshwar to Karad. Chafal's Maruti is one of the eleven Maruti.
History of Chafal -
Samarth built Chafal's Ram temple in 1569 with the help of his disciples and villagers. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj also made a donation for this Ram temple. According to the vision given by Prabhu Sriram, he took out the idol of Rama from Doha of Angpur, which is close to Chafal, and installed it in this temple. Rama of Panchavati thus came to the valley of the Krishna, and Chafal became the chief monastery of the Samartha sect. Chaphal has a Ram temple founded by Samarth Ramdas Swami and two Maruti temples. Das Maruti's temple here is in front of Shriram temple and Veer Maruti's temple is behind Shriram temple.
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| Shriram Mandir, Chafal |
We started our journey towards Chafal at 6am and reached Chafal at 9.30am. We only had a stop at Hotel Sriram at Shirwal for breakfast.
This was my second visit to Chafal Ram mandir, I visited the temple in year 2008. There were no much rush as only a group of ladies which had come to visit elevan maruti. Beware of your belongings as there are lots of monkeys in premise.
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| Veer Maruti |
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| Shriram Mandir |
This Shriram is standing with both hands folded. As there should be an idol of humble Hanumanta in front of Sri Rama, Samartha built a beautiful stone temple and installed Das Maruti in it. This idol is about 6 feet tall. This idol has a very humble expression on the face, eyes resting on the feet of Lord Sri Rama in front. Rama Navami and Hanuman Jayanti celebrated on grade scale.
Ram mandir Chafal temple timings -
Opens at - 5 am to 12:30 pm and 1.30 pm to 9.00 pm
Temple remain closed between 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm
We got to know that Khadicha Maruti at Shinganwadi is very near from Chafal and can be reached within 10 minutes so we decided to visit it. The area was very beautiful with greenery and long fields everywhere, while going we saw some peacocks. The place is a small isolated temple on a hillock, and its very peaceful.
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| Khadicha Maruti, Shinganwadi |
From there we went to the place where Shivaji Maharaj and Samarth Ramdas met for the first time and headed towards Talbid, a birthplace of Sarsenapati Hambirrao Mohite. He was the 3rd Commander in Chief of the Maratha army during reign of Shivaji Maharaj. Talbid is a village near Karad, in Satara district of state Maharashtra. It is 3 km from NH4 after you cross tasavade toll naka. Talbid village is a village at the base of Vasantgad fort. There are state transport as well as auto, jeeps to reach village.
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| Sarsenapati Hambirrao Mohite Samadhi, Talbid |
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| Canon |
It's small but neat and clean, well maintained.
We left for Pune around 1pm and we were hungry so stopped at Hotel Sadguru Pure Veg, Wele. Food was very good, it is very clean and hygienic place may be because it was recently started restaurant. We reached home around 5 pm.
