Gwalior Fort

Gwalior fort occupies a flat sandstone hill above the city, a couple of kilometres long and dropping in sheer faces on most sides. The building people come for is Man Singh Palace at the eastern end, its outer wall still carrying bands of turquoise, yellow and green glazed tile with ducks and elephants worked into them, and beneath it two storeys of cool basement rooms cut into the rock. Elsewhere on the plateau stand the eleventh-century Sas-Bahu temples, the tall and oddly proportioned Teli ka Mandir, and water tanks cut straight into the stone. The road up passes rows of Jain figures carved into the cliff face, some of them many metres tall, set in niches in the fifteenth century.

History

Legend says a local king, Suraj Sen, was cured of leprosy here by a sage named Gwalipa, after whom the place is named. An inscription of the Huna emperor Mihirakula records a sun temple built here in the 6th century, the fort is first mentioned in historical records in the 8th century, and in 1022 Mahmud of Ghazni besieged it for four days, lifting the siege in return for 35 elephants; the Tomar ruler Man Singh, who reigned from 1486 to 1516, built two of its six palaces, and Babur called it "the pearl amongst the fortresses of Hind" (Wikipedia, Gwalior Fort).

Highlights

• Man Singh Palace - the tiled outer wall in turquoise and yellow, and the basement chambers below.
• The rock-cut Jain figures - standing and seated figures in cliff niches along the approach road.
• Sas-Bahu temples - a pair of eleventh-century temples, one large and one small, with dense carving.
• Teli ka Mandir - a tall temple with an unusual barrel-vaulted roof, unlike anything else on the hill.

When to go

October to March is the comfortable window; from April central India gets very hot and the plateau is exposed. Mornings are best for the tiled facade, which faces east and glows early. There is an evening sound and light show at the palace, worth checking in advance because it does not always run outside the season.

Good to know

The hill is large and the monuments are spread across it, so seeing everything means a lot of walking or hiring a vehicle for the top. Much of the tilework has fallen away and only patches survive. The basement rooms are dark and smell strongly of bats. Gwalior city below is congested and the traffic on the approach can be slow.

Nearby

The Jai Vilas palace and its museum are in the city, and Orchha is about two hours south.

Key facts