Our last stop for the day is about one hour away from our accomodation, Bhangardh the haunted castle. It was built in the 16th century by Bhagwant Das as the residence of his second son, Madho Singh. There are multiple legends that all end with the destruction of the fort and it being haunted. The more widely known legend is that a holy person had a restriction on how high the houses could be and that no shadow could fall on his house. When additional columns cast shade on the house he destroyed the whole fort. And this is where we are walking, through the ruins of the houses at the base of the fort.
Of course the actual story is a lot more prosaic with a decline after being conquered by multiple armies and with people drifting away over time. However some of the buildings are still sending and we decide to do a detour towards two two story buildings that overlook each other. It also allows us some breathing room from the people, especially women, on the trail begging for money along the way.
To our surprise you can actually climb up to the second story to explore the rooms and get an overview of the interior courtyard. There is no one else here on this detour and we really enjoy exploring this beautiful building.
There are some surviving interior frescoes and we enjoy the views from the windows of the ruins and an abandoned well that is now used by pigeons for roosting.
We then return to the main path walking towards the fortress which is still far in the distance. This area is quite spooky really with many houses ruined on both side of the path, this is the bazaar area and we can imagine the shops on both sides of the trail during its heyday.
As we approach the fortress there is one more women on the trail who looks to want something from us so we decide to take another detour to explore the outlying ruins.
Specifically this detour takes us to two separate temples that few people are visiting. In fact we don’t encounter any other people on this side trail except two guards at the first temple that arrived just as we are leaving. The first temple is on top of a small hill and we feel like actual explorers as we approach it, what waits for us inside it?
It is really a small temple with an even smaller interior shrine however it is sooo special to finally explore one without other hundreds of people watching us.
Next we visit the other temple nearby, it is a scenic hike on hidden paths and then we explore the almost identical temple for some time before turning back towards the main fortress.
We then pass near a troop of monkeys really carefully. Everyone is telling us that red face is bad and black face is good but we do not want any issues especially as the black faced langur also has a baby. There are also a few birds like robins but nothing that we haven’t seen before.
We pass near to another ruin and because it doesn’t seem that there is a way forward we decide to investigate the ruin, maybe the path continues on the other side of the ruin. It is a quite exciting to explore with many rooms and levels but no continuing path at the top.
We return at the bottom and find the correct path and soon arrive at the impressive fortress wall. Initially we want to visit a temple at the base but there is a group of males, about ten of them, there that is quite aggressive and pushy towards us and we retreat followed by them to an area with more people where they leave us alone laughing…yeah quite funny. That really spoils the visit as now we are scared of any secluded places in the fortress as there are quite a few other male only groups around.
There are some nice views from the fortress as each level is higher and has some even more impressive views. So we can catch our breath after every climb and enjoy the surroundings and then continue on.
We can see the fortress was quite well built with only one way up which was well protected from every level. There are also quite few levels so the invaders would have to be quite tenacious to breach all of them and get at the juicy center.
What we find quite interesting is that many courtyards are full of rubble from the buildings. Somehow we haven’t seen that much rubble in other ruins we visited, we are not sure why. Maybe the rubble is hidden away or maybe it is not excavated usually? We are not sure but it is fun to see it accumulated in every courtyard along the way.
We arrive at the top level and take a look over all the ruins and temples that we can see with the city far in the distance. It is quite a nice view and worth the climb.
The courtyard here also has the usual rubble with columns and other lapidary marvels. And between all of them we see a new bird for us, a lifer, the well named brown rock chat.
We then descend and visit the last major temple here, on the main path, Gopi Nath Temple. Surprisingly no one else is climbing to it, we are not sure if we are allowed but the guards allow us to climb with no comment. It is slightly bigger and has more ornaments than the other two temples we visited but otherwise the structure is quite identical.
We explore the temple both inside and outside and marvel at the decorations and then it is time to return to the car and back to the accomodation.
On the return we pass the usual assortment of Indian road obstacles, overloaded trucks, goats in the road, cows in the road, people in the road, everything possible in the road but we make good time and soon are back at our hotel after a very tiring but beautiful day out.
Now it is time to relax after our tiring day enjoying the beautiful lake and the many birds. On the fields the women are still toiling planting seeds in what we assume is fertile ground.
We then explore a bit more the grounds of the resort especially as there are new guests, two couples, who seem to have taken a liking in jumping in the cold pool in front of our room, repeatedly, making lots of noise.
Finally they leave and we can return to our room and continue to scan the lake which is quite popular. And we get lucky, we see a pair of wild boar coming for a drink, really cool! No leopard or any other mammal though unfortunately.
In the evening we eat dinner and then do our best to find someone, anyone to pay for the room. We are prepared to pay via credit card however unfortunately it does not work and we are left basically penniless after we give all our cash to cover the room. Luckily we had just enough. And then it is time to sleep as tomorrow we have a very early wake up call as the Sariska safari starts at sunrise.
