Triambakeshwar, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas, is located in Nashik District, Maharashtra. A puranic legend links its origin to the birth of the River Godavari.
Origin Story: Sage Gautama and his wife Ahilya lived through a hundred-year drought near Nashik. Gautama's penance pleased Lord Varuna, who, unable to bring rain, instead gave him a source of everlasting divine water to help the people. Jealous local rishis later tricked Lord Ganesha into helping them expel Gautama from their community - Ganesha, appearing as a cow in Gautama's field, died the moment Gautama gently shooed it away with grass, branding him with the sin of killing a cow.
Humiliated and cast out, Gautama sought purification. The rishis told him to circle Brahmagiri mountain 11 times, bathe in the Ganga, and make one crore earthen shivalingas in worship. Gautama did so, and Lord Shiva appeared, revealing that the rishis had wronged him - but Gautama replied that their trickery had brought him the divine vision of Shiva itself, and asked only that the Ganga flow there to benefit all people.
Shiva agreed, bringing forth Ganga in human form, and both Shiva and Ganga chose to remain there forever. Ganga became known in this region as Gautami, and later, Godavari. The Jyotirlinga here is called Triambak because it has three faces representing Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, believed to exist together within the hollow linga - giving Shiva the name Triambakeshwar, "three lords". The present temple was built by the third Peshwa, Balaji Bajirao, between 1740 and 1760, on the site of an older structure.