Dhule
— — a market town that knows its own rivers.
Not only on a wall.
“A district town in the Khandesh plain of northwest Maharashtra, set along the Panzara River. Dhule is a working city of handlooms, the morning milk run, and the bullock-cart route to Nashik and Indore, not a stop on the tourist circuit. The old city around Rajwada and the Sarvajanik Vachanalaya holds the texture of a place that has been a market crossroads for a long time.
Dhule, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Dhule is the administrative seat of Dhule district in northwest Maharashtra, set along the Panzara River in the historical Khandesh region. The 2011 census recorded a city population of about 376,000, making it the largest urban centre in the district. National Highway 3, the old Mumbai-to-Agra route, runs through town, which has kept Dhule a crossroads between the Deccan plateau to the south and the Tapi valley and Madhya Pradesh to the north for centuries. The city was developed in its modern form under the Maratha Holkar rulers of Indore.
The Panzara River runs through Dhule on its way to join the Tapi system, and the town's water story is the river's story. The Akkalpada Dam upstream and the Lower Panzara Dam supply both irrigation and municipal water to the district. In a good monsoon year, the Panzara fills the old ghats inside the city; in a dry year, the riverbed shows the bones of the basin. The seasonal swing is part of what shapes life here, from the handloom trade to the kitchen gardens.
The everyday landmarks are the Rajwada, the old administrative compound at the centre of the city, and the Sarvajanik Vachanalaya, a public library founded in 1887 that holds one of the larger Marathi reference collections in Khandesh. Two hill forts sit within easy reach of town: Laling Fort, about eight kilometres south, and Songir Fort, about twenty kilometres north along the old highway. Both are climbable on a long morning, and both reward the walk with a view across the plain.