Ramkund, Nashik

At a glance

• City — Nashik, Maharashtra — in the Panchavati quarter
• River — Godavari
• Association — Rama, Sita and Lakshmana during the vanavasa
• Amrit Snan — the Vaishnava akhadas bathe here — 11 September 2027 in the coming Simhastha
• Known for — asthi-visarjan, the immersion of the ashes of the departed

Panchavati, and why Nashik

Nashik sits in the country the Ramayana calls Panchavati — the place of five banyans, where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana lived during the forest exile, and from where Sita was taken. The city's name is traditionally derived from nasika, the nose, for the episode in which Lakshmana cut off Shurpanakha's.

Ramkund is the kund at the centre of that association: tradition holds that Rama bathed here. It is a walled kund on the Godavari, the great river of the Deccan, which the south calls the Ganga of the peninsula.

The kund of the ancestors

Ramkund is one of the principal places in India for asthi-visarjan — the immersion of the ashes of the dead. The tradition holds that ashes given to the water here dissolve completely, and families travel from across Maharashtra and far beyond to perform the rite.

This gives the kund a character quite unlike a festival ghat. On any ordinary day it is a place of quiet, careful ritual conducted by families in mourning. A visitor should carry that in mind: photography of a family at asthi-visarjan is an intrusion, whatever the light is doing.

At the Simhastha

The Nashik-Trimbakeshwar Simhastha divides its Amrit Snan between two places, and this is the crucial thing to understand about it. The Vaishnava akhadas — the three Ramanandi anis — bathe at Ramkund in Nashik. The Shaiva akhadas bathe at Kushavarta Kund in Trimbakeshwar, about 30 km away, on a separate day.

In the coming Simhastha that means 11 September 2027 at Ramkund for the Vaishnavas and 12 September 2027 at Kushavarta for the Shaivas. The flag hoisting that opens the whole period is on 31 October 2026, and the main Amrit Snans fall on 2 August and 31 August 2027.

The separation is a settlement, and an old one. Precedence between the Shaiva and Vaishnava orders at Nashik was disputed bitterly in earlier centuries; giving each family its own kund and its own day is the arrangement that ended it.