Gwalior Fort

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Three holidays were coming in a row, so I and my office friends wanted to enjoy its every-bit of moment and wanted to spend our holidays at some new place. After exploring and discussing about few destinations which we can cover in this short time period, we finally decided to visit Gwalior which is about 800kms far from Udaipur.

We boarded the train from Udaipur at 10:30 pm on 25th September. Though it took us about 15hrs to arrive at the Gwalior station we
did not get bored, how can you… when you are traveling in a group, ranking the SEC beauties, playing cards till 5:30 am and many more things……

We arrived at 3:30 pm on 26th Sep and then we hired an auto to reach the Gwalior fort. We dumped our luggage at the nearest
Sikh Gurudwara which is built in the same premises. After that we visited the fort.


This fort is situated at Gopachal Parvat, nearly 100m above the town of Gwalior. The walls, which encircle the fort, are solid and nearly 10m high. In places the cliff overhangs and elsewhere it has been clipped to make it steep and hence unscalable. Due to its typical construction it earned the reputation of being north and central India’s most impregnable fort. Babur described the fort as, "The pearl amongst fortresses in India".

Raja Man Singh built this palace. It is also known as the CHIT Mandir or Painted Palace, because of the tiled and painted decorations of ducks, elephants and peacocks. Bright colors were used, which look very attractive even today. The palace has 4 levels. The two under ground level were used as prisons during the Mughal period.

We then took the ticket to enjoy the light and sound show. It is the must see event when you are visiting the Gwalior fort. The Sound and Light show at the Man Mandir Palace of Gwalior Fort gives you a glimpse into the glorious past.

We then had our food in the Langar at the gurudwara. Langar or free kitchen is the system which is started by the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak dev Ji. It is designed to uphold the principle of equality between all people of the world regardless of religion, caste, colour, creed, age, gender or social status. In the Langar all people would sit on the floor together, as equals, to eat the same simple food. It is here that all people high or low, rich or poor, male or female, all sit in the same pangat (literally "row" or "line") to share and enjoy the food together.

By the time we are all tired and desperately need some good sleep. Next day we had to reach the Madhav national park, Shivpuri which is about 130kms far from the Gwalior.

In the morning we had chosen the southern side of the fort to reach the railway station. In this route there are many Jain sculptures along the rock faces. These sculptures were originally cut in the mid-15th century but were defaced by the marauding armies of Babur in 1527.

We left the Gwalior at 11:30 am; we had our lunch in the way to the Shivpuri at the road side dhava. We reached the national park at 2:30 pm. We then entered in the park with the excitement of some wild animals spotting. Well then I realize that it is very difficult to spot the wild animals in the forest it is not like a zoo where you are assured to see them. We wandered inside the forest and spotted few animals like Chinkara, Chital, Langur, neelgai, four-horned antelopes but unfortunately we could spot the tiger…our hard luck …..Tiger is now in the list of the rare species. We were little disappointed on our hard luck.

We came back to the guest house and enjoyed a beautiful evening. We spend our time sitting on the bank of the Sakhya Sagar.
We went to the bed at about 11:30 pm. Next day morning we rose early and were able to watch the sunrise, which was really very beautiful. Then we left the guest house after the break fast, visited the nearby places and then headed towards to the Gwalior railway station. Again we had our lunch at the roadside dhava. I am very fond about the food at the dhavas. You can not find such taste in any restaurants.


Finally we boarded the train at 3:30 pm from the Gwalior and we reached Udaipur next day at 6:30 am.
Our holidays were finished and we were quite satisfied with it in fact it exceeded all of our expectations except only one thing that we could not spot the tiger.


Thanks to my friends Amit, Shivendra, Navneet, Vikram, Manav and Satinder for their nice company.

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Photos

Group
From right - Amit, Satinder, Navneet, Shivendra, Manav, Vikram and Me

Jain sculpture
These sclupture were made using very basic tools like chisel and hammer......isn't it amazing....

ooooooohm
Morning Prayer

Comments

[Rajan Chauhan]

Beautiful Gwalior
Hi, these pictures shows that there are so many beautiful sites in Gwalior. Really, I think its a great place to visit for everyone.