Visited in May 2015.

Rani-ki Vav is one of the biggest and most ornamented stepwells you can find in Gujarat and southern Rajastan. It was constructed at the beginning of the rule of Solanki dynasty (XI century) and most of the time was covered with the silt from Saraswati River - for the first time the stepwell was flooded at the last phase of its construction. That's why now we can enjoy woderfull sculptured panels representing apsaras, Dus Avatars, sadhu men and floral and geometrical designs. Most sculptures are in devotion to Vishnu and that's really rare.

This stepwell is 64 m long, 20 m wide and 27 m deep.

At the bottom of the well at the western side you can see a big water tank that was linked through an underground channel with the cistern - the only part of the structure used even at the beginning of XX century.

Rani-ki Vav is not easy to reach using public transport: while coming from Ahmedabad you have to change at least twice, first in Mehsana and then in Patan from where you have to take a taxi or walk around 8 km. It much better to use a taxi driver from Ahmedabad and combine the trip it with a visit to Sun Temple in Modhera. It takes around 7 hours and on the way back you can visit other stepwells (Adalaj Vav - in my opinion the most interesting of the stepwells I've seen, although not so big) and historical monuments. Expect to pay something around 1200 rupees for the whole trip.

There were no guides at the entrance to the very nice park/maidan in which the Rani-ki Vav is located, but you can buy a little book about the place in the ticket booth - it gives you a very good explanation and shows how it looked some decades ago.