Chand Baori

Thirty-five hundred steps down to the water, six degrees cooler at the bottom

Chand Baori is a stepwell in the village of Abhaneri, in Rajasthan's Dausa district, about 95 km from Jaipur, and one of the deepest and largest in India. It drops about 30 metres into the ground in 13 storeys, an upside-down pyramid of 3,500 narrow steps in double flights zigzagging down three of its four sides to a tank at the bottom. The classical Indian texts on architecture call this design a vijay vapi. In a land this arid, the whole structure exists to reach water and hold on to it.

Its name is said to come from Raja Chanda, a local ruler of the Nikumbh dynasty, but no inscription has been found for the stepwell or for the Harshat Mata Temple beside it. Its style and carving match the terraced temples of Paranagar and Mandore, which dates it to the 8th or 9th century, and it was probably built before the temple. Later rulers added a palace building with arches above it; the fourth, northern side carries pillared corridors many storeys high, with niche shrines to Ganesha and to Mahishasuramardini, and the well also holds an image of Vishnu reclining on the serpent Ananta.

Pilgrims to the temple of Harshat Mata, goddess of joy, rested on its steps and drank after long journeys, ceremonies were held here, and in the worst heat the village came down to it, because the air at the bottom stays 5 to 6 °C cooler than at the top. One side has a pavilion and a resting room for the royal family. Mahmud of Ghazni damaged the temple, the Mughals defaced the stepwell's sculptures, and the Archaeological Survey of India now keeps carved stones from the temple in the well's arcades.

With no record of who built it, the legends filled the gap. Local lore says the whole well went up in a single night, raised by djinns rather than men, and that no one can climb back up by the same stairs they came down. Another story has a tunnel running from Abhaneri to Dausa.

The stepwell has played itself in films such as The Fall, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Paheli, and it inspired the prison pit in The Dark Knight Rises, though that scene was not shot on location here. The Archaeological Survey of India manages the site, and the best time to visit is October to March.