In Kolhapur, Maharashtra, wrestling is not just a sport—it is a way of life. At dawn, when the mist still clings to the sugarcane fields, young men gather barefoot in the akhadas (wrestling pits), their bodies gleaming with oil, their feet sinking into the sacred red earth. This is kushti, India’s traditional form of wrestling, and Kolhapur is its beating heart.

The akhada is both gymnasium and temple. Wrestlers, known as pehlwans, begin their day by saluting the pit, scooping handfuls of clay to rub onto their skin. The earth is softened with ghee, turmeric, and buttermilk, believed to purify and strengthen the body. Training is rigorous: hundreds of squats (dands) and push-ups (baithaks), sparring bouts that churn up the soil, and exercises with stone weights and clubs.

Kushti here is bound to tradition. The pehlwan’s diet is as disciplined as his practice—milk, almonds, ghee, and bananas fuel their strength, while alcohol and tobacco are strictly forbidden. Many live in the akhada itself, leading lives of celibacy, discipline, and devotion, their bodies treated as vessels of strength and purity.

Kolhapur has produced some of India’s most celebrated wrestlers, and its akhadas are legendary for preserving the old ways even as modern wrestling mats and Olympic styles dominate elsewhere. In competitions, bouts unfold in a swirl of red dust, the crowd roaring as two bodies lock, twist, and fall in a ritual as old as the Mahabharata.

To watch kushti in Kolhapur is to witness more than sport. It is to see earth, body, and discipline fused into a living tradition—where every fall and every rise is both combat and prayer, played out on the sacred soil of the pit.