Karli Caves

An early court-sized postcard by Paul Gerhardt, chief lithographer at The Ravi Varma Press in - yes - Karli, outside Bombay. The firm moved its premises here in the late 1890s. Gerhardt and Manager of the Press Fritz Schleicher liked to hunt in the surrounding hillsides, as well as paint and meet the Varma Brothers who found the location conducive to work and free of the plague that often made life in the city difficult. The cave entrance is from the first century ACE and opens into a Buddhist temple cut out of rock.