Eight of the hill forts in Rajasthan are part of a serial UNESCO World Heritage site including Kumbhalgarh Fort where we made a pit stop on the way from Udaipur to Jodhpur. This fort is hidden in the mountains away from practically anything. It isn’t even on a main road, but on a spur from the small winding highway that passes through the mountains. However, because of the fort itself and the collection of temples on the hillside next to it, Kumbhalgarh Fort is definitely worthy of a visit.
A massive wall surrounds the fort, its temples, a small village of homes, and a bit of agricultural space. Once up on the fort, you can see this wall wrapping all the way around climbing up and down the hills creating a protective barrier.
The village kind of splits the temples from the fort just inside the main gate. On the one side is a bit of an acropolis with several Hindu and Jain temples. One even has a very Parthenon feel to it with the columns and flat roof. When we were there in February, the succulents had their towering flower stalks adding nature’s architecture to the collection.
The fort itself has another couple layers of protective walls that wind up the side of the hill to the palace. This fort has not been in use for a long time, so it is not fully furnished or set up as a museum like many of the others we visited in India. However, it is clean and well-maintained. They also appear to be actively preserving the structures.
Once at the fort we looked for the entrance to get it. The giant doors seemed to all be locked until we reached the end set. We went in and found a simple courtyard surrounded by suites of rooms as was the case in many of the forts and palaces we visited. The main motif of these rooms were borders of elephants in action painted around the walls.
We poked our head into all of the rooms we could. We didn’t want to waste the energy it took to climb up to the fort or drive to the site. In the corner of these suites was my favorite room. It was painted green. Since there is no electric lighting in the rooms, we relied on the natural light coming in the windows. The green room emanated a soft, calm glow with the stenciled flowers and filigree dancing around the space.
We also found the narrow staircases that led to other parts of the fort and to the roofs. On top we got a sense of scale for the wall and compound it surrounds. They have their own step well and fields. It could probably be a pretty self-sufficient community if they had to be locked down for any reason.
After a couple hours of exploring this complex that could truly use several if you wanted, we hopped in the car and returned to the main road leading to our next pit stop, Ranakpur, one of the most famous Jain temples in India.
