History

The river Kukdi that flows by Nighoj village in Maharashtra has shaped up beautiful potholes in the riverbed that have fascinated geologists and visitors.
EVERY year over six lakh devotees visits Nighoj, a village 75 kilometres from Pune in Ahmednagar district, to witness a “miracle”. At the stroke of midnight, villagers claim, an earthen pot filled with water emerges from the main well in the village, the pot is put on display for three days and after a grand procession, it’s immersed into the well so that it rises again the next year. Everyone here amazed by the miracle.
Bigger miracles—like the small gorges the river Kukdi, a tributary of the Bhima river, has formed over the years. The river, which flows by the village, takes a semi-circular turn less than 50 metres behind the temple, throwing up swirls and water currents that beat relentlessly against the hard basalt rockbed. The river has done this for countless years, giving rise to one of the most fascinating vignettes of geology in the Deccan plateau beautiful rock formations and several potholes formed by the water flowing through the stone.
The potholes—spread over three kilometres with an average depth of over 100 feet—give the basin the look of a canyon. “This is a geographical phenomenon where the pebbles that are carried by the river get locked in the cracks developed in the basalt rock riverbed. These pebbles, which rotate due to the water current, form pot shaped cavities in the basalt rock. This is what you see in Nighoj. The process is spread over thousands of years.
Faith, the villagers say, can move mountains, so what’s a river? Geologists, foreign researchers and photographers who frequently visit their village.
A team of researchers from National Geographic had visited Nighoj to study the potholes as well as to study the birds in the area. In 1997, Citizen magazine had reported about the potholes.The villagers of Nighoj, primarily agriculturists who grow wheat, onion and sugarcane