Adalaj Step Well

Finally! Exams over.
And the good days follow. I wrote the last exam on 30th, next day passed by just in recovering from a bad cold I'd caught during the exams. I was supposed to attend T.I.M.E. class today but as we were late for the same and got ready anyway so I thought it would be a good idea to visit some nearby place. And Adalaj Step Well was first in the row and I had been thinking of visiting the place from quite a time.

We left for Adalaj around 9:30 am. Just three of us, Nitin, Pathak and me. We reached the place soon, though had to walk from the main highway to the site.
Looking it from a distance it doesn't looks like a great place but when you actually descend down the steps, you realize that your first impression wasn't a good indicator of what it would be like inside. As soon as you look across the hallway towards the octagonal storeys held on a similar number of pillars you notice that the place is special and has not yet lost it's charm after 500 years.

There weren't a lot of people there. Just a few visitors and some BArch students (this is just my guess as they roamed around the place making skeches and measuring distances). We spent around two hours there, roaming across all four storeys( or basements if you can call them so, they all are below the ground level). There are actually two well like structres, one octagonal in shape and accessible through steps and the other is smoothly circular and there aren't any steps to reach the water. Water now isn't clean and is home for fishes. The carvings and sculptures are really worth a lot of appreciation. I have a lot more to say but I'd rather let the photographs tell the rest story.

(Click on the photographs to enlarge)
1.The Hallway (Pillars are visible)
2.The four Storeys
3.Marvellous carving and design
4.The circular Well
5.Sculture array
6.Pathak and Nitin at Entrance
7.And finally some archeological information regarding Step Well