Saptashrungi
— — the goddess on the seventh peak.
Not only on a wall.
“A temple on a ridge of seven peaks in the Western Ghats, about 60 km north of Nashik. Saptashrungi Devi is one of the Shakti Peethas — Maharashtra's largest active pilgrimage to the goddess. The road climbs through teak and bamboo to the village at Nanduri; from there a long flight of steps, or now a funicular, lifts pilgrims to the shrine cut into the cliff. from the studio
Saptashrungi, 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.
Saptashrungi sits at roughly 1,230 metres in the Sahyadri range of the Western Ghats, in Nashik district of Maharashtra, India. The name combines sapta, seven, and shringa, peaks: the temple of Saptashrungi Devi is cut into the cliff face of a seven-peaked ridge. It lies about 60 km north of Nashik and 18 km from the highway town of Vani. The site is counted among the 51 Shakti Peethas of Hindu tradition — the points where parts of Sati are said to have fallen — and is one of the three-and-a-half Shakti Peethas of Maharashtra.
The shrine is rock-cut. The image of Saptashrungi Devi — eighteen-armed and roughly eight feet tall — is carved directly into the cliff face rather than installed as a moveable idol, and is one of the few Shakti images of this scale in India. A flight of 510 stone steps rises from Nanduri village to the shrine; since 2018 a funicular railway, built by Suyog Funicular, has carried pilgrims the final ascent in about five minutes. Markandeya Hill stands across the gorge, named for the sage said to have composed the Durga Saptashati within sight of the goddess.
Two festivals draw the largest crowds. Chaitra Utsav, in the Hindu month of Chaitra in March or April, culminates on Chaitra Purnima and pulls several hundred thousand pilgrims to the ridge over a week. Navaratri in September or October runs nine nights with the climax on Vijayadashami; the funicular runs continuously and the village of Nanduri fills with stalls. The south-west monsoon, June to September, brings around two metres of rain and frequent cloud — the road becomes hazardous and many pilgrims wait until October. December and January are the clearest months.