Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is a small town and a municipal council in Satara district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a hill station located in the Sahyadri mountain range. With one of the few evergreen forests of India, it served as the summer capital of Bombay province during the British Raj.GeographyMahabaleshwar is located at. It has an average elevation of 1353m.Located about 120km southwest of Pune and 285km from Mumbai, Mahabaleshwar is a vast plateau measuring 150km2, bound by valleys on all sides. It reaches a height of 1439m at its highest peak above sea level, known as Wilson/Sunrise Point.Mahabaleshwar comprises three villages: sumit dave Malcolm Peth, Old "Kshetra" Mahabaleshwar and part of the Shindola village.Mahabaleshwar is the source of the Krishna River that flows across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The legendary source of the river is a spout from the mouth of a statue of a cow in the ancient temple of Mahadev in Old Mahabaleshwar. Legend has it that Krishna is Lord Vishnu himself as a result of a curse on the trimurtis by Savitri. Also, its tributaries Venna and Koyna are said to be Lord Shiva and Lord Brahma themselves. An interesting thing to notice is that 4 other rivers come out from the cow's mouth apart from Krishna and they all travel some distance before merging into Krishna. These rivers are the Koyna, Venna (Veni), Savitri, and Gayatri.