Kumbhalgarh
Kumbhalgarh is one of those places that, even more than Fathepur Sikri, for whatever reason, never became part of the beaten international tourist track. It seems odd since everyone in Rajasthan seems to know about it. Professor Modi, of Rajasthan University, told my class it was one of Rajasthan’s must-see sights. My host family recommended I take a day or weekend trip there. Lonely Planet mentions Kumbhalgarh but doesn’t particularly highlight it. And so, Mark, Haley and I, the only international tourists in some tens of kilometers radius, were the beneficiaries of India’s international tourist industry’s inexplicable neglect. Thus, we found ourselves the lone non-domestic tourists on a private bus a little step below our usual Rajasthani state bus transportation from Udaipur to Kumbhalgarh. The 100 kilometers between the two cities took 4 hours to cover as the bus stopped for literally every man, woman or child by the side of the narrow mountain road. Farmers lit beedies on the bus; the conductor stopped for half hour long chats with local fruit sellers; maize crops and breathtaking mountain scenery passed us by; and I delighted the back half of the bus by speaking (poor) Hindi to a crowd of excited school children.
Kumbhalgarh itself, a fortress clinging to the peak of a mountain in the Aravali chain with the second longest wall in the world after the great wall of China, is beautiful, and more beautiful for its sense of isolation. Walking the fort’s grounds, I met more cows and bats than humans. As in Fathepur Sikri, we could scale stairs, walls, and towers that would have been blocked off in a saner, more litigious country. From the top of the fort, we watched the monsoon rains fall over a blue-green plane and flat, glassy lakes in a the distance. I am not sure I have ever seen such a beautiful, clear horizon line. The sunset bathed the yellowish stone of the walls in golden light. As night fell, the whole fort was lit up against the night sky by artificial lights. And the sky, so far from light pollution - from pollution at all - was absolutely thick with stars.
