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After a long night
journey in the train-Punjab Mail, we reach Gwalior at 4pm. The tour operators
come to receive us from the station and we are to stay at Hotel Landmark. There is lot of excitement,
we go to each others room to compare the comfort and we discover that some have
good rooms and some are average. Our (I shared room with my friend) room is
average. After freshening up, we go to the dining hall that is behind the
building. We meet other members of the group over the short introduction. There
are about 48 people who will travel with us..28 members have taken 7days tour
and 22 members will be taking 15days tour with us. We have two buses.
The next day we do sightseeing.
If I were to just see the picture of Gwalior fort, I would never dare to explore it..I am afraid of steep steps and long treks..but somehow the curiosity got better of me and I followed my friends, walking slowly and went ahead to admire the architecture of this beautiful fort that is two miles long and 35 feet high. We had a guide with us who told us interesting stories as he took us around the fort, showing us the music rooms, library, entertainment lawn and many other rooms..The carvings and the designs on the walls had significance of art and culture....unfortunately, the mirrors that gave the fort its beauty are not there anymore but it indeed fits its description as "The pearl amongst the fortresses of Hind"
Cross posted from my
Facebook timeline
One room I was
specially impressed was the music room that had lattice walls. The queens sat
behind the walls and watched the performance of the musicians and dancers, but
the musicians were not allowed to look up to have any eye contact with the women.
We spend two hours
exploring the fort, each room very artistically done with engraving of animals,
flowers and geometrical designs…Next we drove through busy street to go to
Tansen tomb.
Gwalior is blessed with musicians. It is believed that even when a child cries..there is music in his voice .Remember Tansen? The great musician of Mughal era? His body rests here surrounded by architectrual structure with hexagonal pillars in four corners. The building is square, topped by a square dome with blue ceramic tiles. The tomb walls have intricate carvings with latticework. There was a tamarind tree closer to Tansen's tombs. We plucked the sour leaves to clear our throat and then tried to sing classical like Tansen...we still couldn't match his talent...but at least we tried....
Cross posted from my
Facebook profile.
We came to the hotel
for lunch (cooked for the group) and then left again the evening to Jal Vilas Palace
The huge Jai Vilas palace had 423 rooms..how they kept it sparkling clean is anybody's guess but for fitness freak, just walking inside the palace can cover 10,000 steps. I saw only 25 rooms that had branded furniture and women wore gold embroidered clothes that we now see successful ppl wearing during weddings. There was a big indoor swimming pool with diving board, a big banquet hall with silver train that carried hard drinks for the guest and 2 huge crystal chandlers that are supposed be the biggest in the world.. it is the 19th century residence cum museum, it has splendid architecture and beautiful curios that belonged to Mughal Emperors and legendary Laxmibai of Jhansi. Unfortunately there was no lift in such a huge palace and climbing up and down to visit different rooms was quite challenging for me.
Cross posted from
Facebook timeline
We were back by 7pm,
but I was quite tired. I came back to the room to read a book, while my friends
went to explore the city, to do some shopping and some went to see Jain temple
of the city.
