Chand Baori
Interesting facts
- The stepwell plunges about 30 metres into the ground, which places it among the deepest and largest stepwells in India.
- It is built as an inverted pyramid, a type that classical Indian architectural treatises such as the Aparajitaprccha call a vijay vapi.
- On each of its three stepped sides, double flights of steps descend across ten landings, which creates the famous criss-cross pattern.
- The prison pit in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises drew on Chand Baori, although the scenes were not actually shot there.
- Besides The Fall, the well has served as a location for Indian films including Paheli, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Bhoomi.
- With no inscription to go on, scholars date the well by comparing its style and carving with terraced temples at Paranagar and Mandore.
- The architectural historian Morna Livingston singled it out as a rare site where two classical eras of water building meet in one structure.
- A carved panel shows Vishnu reclining on the cosmic serpent Ananta, a classic image of the god asleep between cycles of creation.
- Carved stones from the ruined Harshat Mata temple next door are now kept by the Archaeological Survey of India in the well's arcades.
- According to local legend, a secret tunnel once ran from Abhaneri all the way to the town of Dausa.
Why it is worth it
Seen from its rim, Chand Baori barely looks like a well at all. It looks like an optical puzzle: three sides of a vast square pit are covered with thousands of narrow stone steps arranged in small zigzag flights, a crisscross pattern that drops thirteen levels towards a pool of green water at the bottom. Around 3,500 steps make up the pattern, and the eye never quite settles on where one flight ends and the next begins. It is one of the deepest and most photographed stepwells in India, and one of the oldest still standing.
Stepwells were the answer of dry western India to a hard problem — how to reach water whose level swung wildly between monsoon and drought. Rather than lower a bucket, you walked down to it, and the deep shaded well also stayed several degrees cooler than the air above, making it a place to gather in summer heat. Chand Baori sits in the village of Abhaneri in Rajasthan's Dausa district, and its oldest parts are dated to around the eighth and ninth centuries. Local tradition credits Raja Chanda of the Nikumbh dynasty with building it, which would explain the name, though no inscription has been found to confirm it.
The fourth side is different: a multi-storeyed pavilion of galleries, projecting balconies and windows stacked above the water, with a hall and stage where, it is thought, the court watched performances. These upper pavilions and arcades are a much later addition, dated to the eighteenth century. Niches in the lower levels hold stone sculptures, among them Ganesha and the goddess Mahishasuramardini. Next door stands the Harshat Mata temple, a shrine of the same early period dedicated to a goddess of joy, badly damaged in later raids but still carrying fine carved stonework. The contrast between the austere geometry of the steps and the crowded ornament of the temple is half the pleasure of a visit. The stepwell has appeared in several films, including Tarsem Singh's The Fall.
Getting there
Abhaneri lies about 6 km from the town of Bandikui, whose junction station has regular trains from Jaipur; from the station, auto-rickshaws cover the last stretch. By road the village is roughly 90 km east of Jaipur, and it is usually visited as a day trip from Jaipur. The nearest airport is Jaipur International Airport (JAI), about 82 km away in a straight line.
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From the encyclopaedia
Chand Baori is a stepwell situated in the village of Abhaneri in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It extends approximately 30 m (100 ft) into the ground, making it one of the deepest and largest stepwells in India. It is named after a local ruler of the Nikumbh dynasty called Raja Chanda, and its construction is dated to the 8th–9th centuries. It has 3500 steps cascading 13 stories deep into a massive tank at the bottom and has been constructed in an upside-down pyramid style.
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