Malkapur

Small Maharashtra rail town used as a base for Lonar Crater and its ancient lakeside temples.

Malkapur is a small town in the Buldhana district of Maharashtra, on the Central Railway line between Bhusawal and Akola. The town itself is unremarkable, but it serves as the practical base for travellers heading to the Lonar Crater — one of only a handful of hypervelocity meteorite impact craters on Earth, and the only one formed in basalt rock. The crater is roughly 50,000 years old and contains a saline soda lake surrounded by 12th-century Hemadanti temples — the most striking is the Daitya Sudan Temple — and a surprising concentration of wildlife inside the protected sanctuary: peafowl, monitor lizards, chinkaras and langurs.

The trip from Malkapur to Lonar takes three to four hours by road each way, so most visitors stay overnight at the rim rather than try to do the round trip in a day. Malkapur itself has limited accommodation, mostly small lodges near the railway station.

Guide

Getting There

Malkapur is a stop on the Central Railway's Mumbai–Nagpur main line. Trains from Mumbai and Pune stop here daily — the Maharashtra Express, Azad Hind Express, and several Howrah-bound services all serve the route. From Mumbai the journey is around 9–10 hours; from Pune, about 7.

By road, Malkapur is on National Highway 6 between Akola and Jalgaon. Buses connect the town to Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, and Nagpur, but the train is more comfortable on the long routes.

To reach Lonar from Malkapur is around 100 km by road, three to four hours each way. There are state-transport buses, but most travellers hire a car or taxi for the day. Plan to leave very early; an overnight at Lonar saves a long return trip.

Guide

Things to Do

There is little to detain you in Malkapur itself — the town is a working agricultural and railway centre rather than a sightseeing destination. The reason travellers come here is to reach the Lonar Crater, about 100 km southeast across the Buldhana district. The crater is the only known hypervelocity meteorite impact in basalt rock anywhere on Earth, and it is one of the more genuinely remarkable natural sites in central India.

In the town itself, the Malkapur Railway Station — a working station on the Central Railway's Mumbai–Nagpur line — is the most visible piece of infrastructure and a useful orientation point.

Guide

When to Go

October to February is the best window. Temperatures are bearable (daytime highs 25–30°C, cool nights), the post-monsoon landscape is green, and migratory birds are on the Lonar lake. December and January are the most comfortable.

March to May is dry and very hot — temperatures regularly above 40°C — and the lake levels drop. Travel is uncomfortable but possible if you can move in the early morning.

June to September brings the monsoon, which can wash out roads to Lonar and make the crater paths slippery. The landscape is at its greenest, but practically more difficult.