Stutzfamily.com>Travel Pictures

Current stop: Ranthambore Fort Previous: Ranthambore Road Next: Homeward Bound

 

Monstrously huge, massive walls go on forever around this place. They reminded me of the fortifications we saw in Eastern Europe on our Castle tour with Nathan and Carla Regan: thick, gigantic walls with small, spiked, arched entries to ensure maximum enemy casualties when trying to enter and minimal escape opportunities once stuck inside. Of course, those castles in Europe didn't have monkeys climbing around on them!!

We found out the second largest fort in Rajasthan was also in the park, but as it is not maintained is not as frequently touristed as the more famous forts at Jaisalmer and Jodhpur.

Intrigued, we spent a whole afternoon walking around this straight-out-of-the-“Jungle Book”-fort.

 We hauled ourselves up innumerable flights of steps and hoisted ourselves through several secret doors (with Breck taking copious notes along the way) until we finally got to the inner buildings of the fort. 

After passing some hand created and painted idols, as well as huge stone faces reminiscent of those we saw in Honduras, we wound our way up the mountainside.

---

Inside the protective walls we found an incredible religion and stylistic mix as we wandered ala Indiana Jones through the overgrown trails

(and reveled in our conquest over nature)

There were Jain temples, still standing proud, but open to the elements...

There was the fort, originally from the 1100's and occupied through the 1700s

festooned with Mughal era pavilions and gazebos

	A still-operating Hindu temple sits in the village at the far recesses of the fort complex. The herds of cows, goats, and monkeys didn't keep the devout away. We saw many, many people going up to visit this (and other) temples in the fort, and they are the source of our fun people pictures later in the page...

The remains of a mosque stand along the shore of what was once the rulers' fishing pond

Now overgrown and low on water, little remains of its glory days

We were the rock star hits of the fort.

Everywhere we went, people were asking to take pictures with us. Susan is a bit nervous about that, having heard that some end up on the internet (gasp!!). But we thought it was pretty funny that some people (like the guy above and the group to the left) simply wanted us to take their picture! And they were pretty excited about posing with Breck, let me tell you!!

This was a group from a local school, and all the kids and teachers ran over to get photographed too!

---

We did a puja (prayer offering) at a Buddhist temple, in recognition and thanks for a safe trip to date and got our first orange wrist ties and forehead bindis as a result. Seeing some women stacking up prayer rocks outside the temple, we decided to join in the tradition as well.

We happily explored the fort for the next few hours, and when we saw the locals leaving we decided it was time for us to head back too. We went back to our hotel for our usual dinner of tea, chapattis and rice for Alea; jam toast and omelet for Breck; pilau - mild saffron rice with vegetables- for Susan; and spicy mutton or chicken with rice for Dave.

To the winter break 2007-08 main page
To the main India page
To the Stutz's Welcome Page