Junagadh Travel Guide - Page 1
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Junagadh Travel Guide - http://www.ixigo.com/travel-guide/junagadh page 1 collars. TIP GUJARAT-DAMAN & DIU 556 There is evidence of a prehistoric HERITAGE HOLIDAYS IN INDIA Another Junagadh settlement around Junagadh. In 4th-3rd section has ornate brass howdahs and Junagadh district of Gujarat is century BCE, Junagadh formed a part palanquins. There are elaborately sculpted of the Saurashtra janapada. The word female chauri (plumed fan) bearers being located at the foot of the Girnar Junagadh and its earlier version, Jirnadurga, swallowed by fish. There’s also a macabre hills. The earlier name of this literally mean old fort. Junagadh is a weapons collection, including a walking stick princely city was walled city with the central Dhal Road with a small pistol built into its handle. "Sorath". Junagadh is a running through it. Every other road in this significant city in the history of town is either twisting or narrow or both. It You’ll have to remove your shoes at the India and was ruled by many is best to start with Bahauddin (or Sardar ticket counter The bazaar in front of the powerful dynasties like the Vallabh Bhai Patel) Gateway, across the Junagadh Palace celebrates late 19th- Mauryan dynasty, the Solanki railway station. Palatial pastiche The most century kitsch with Gothic arches, standing bizarre of all Junagadh’s buildings must be next to Awadhi style gateways, and dynasty and in the mid 17th Famous For : City the 19th-century Mahabat Maqbara, built by surmounted by a European clock tower. A century it came under the Mughal Bahadur Khan III for his father Mahabat mosque unlike any other The 19th-century rule. Junagadh is one of the most attractive Khan II. The structure, a mixture of Indo- Jumma Masjid, with its Gothic arches, tourist destinations of Gujarat. This primitive Saracenic, Islamic and European chandeliers and colonial ceiling fans, can be city holds many evidences of the history it architecture, is awesome. A board next to it easily mistaken for a ballroom, if it wasn’t has witnessed. Numerous forts and calls it ‘an excellent example of post- for the mimbar. Its multi-coloured pillars are monuments built by the rulers of different medieval Islamic architecture in an Indian a bit of an eyeful. Out of this world Near dynasties can be seen here. Placed on the environment’. Khapra Khodia lies the 19thcentury outskirts of the city, an inscription with Maqbara of Naju Bibi, an ambitious and fourteen Edicts of Ashoka can be found on a Next to it is the elaborate Bahauddin powerful begum who briefly ruled over large boulder. The city is also home to the Maqbara (built in 1878-92) with its elegant Junagadh in the name of her teenage son. It eternal shrine of Lord Shiva, the Somnath corkscrew towers straight out of a fairy tale. is fashioned in a distinctly indigenous temple. The temple shelters one of the Request someone from the neighbouring Junagadh style and the dome actually looks twelve sacred Jyothirlingas and attracts Jumma Masjid to open its doors A picture of like something akin to a UFO. devotees from all across India and outside the past In the 19th-century Junagadh the country. Besides, the place is also Palace, near Diwan Chowk, is the Durbar Next to Naju Bibi’s tomb is Barah Shahid, sanctuary of the wild Asiatic Lions. The Hall Museum with an unusual collection of the graves of 12 martyrs — soldiers of the Sakkarbaug Zoo and the wildlife museum artefacts associated with Junagadh Nawabs. Tughlaq Sultanate of Delhi who died in a can give you a sight of wildlife prevalent in This Pdf and its contents are copyright © It has chairs and thrones arranged to imply failed ambush against the Rajput ruler of 2013,ixigo.com, all rights reserved. ixigo logo, the character and all other marks displayed herein are the place. registered and/or common law trademarks of an imminent durbar session. On its walls Junagadh. The graves are housed in an ixigo.com and/or third parties. hang portraits, including two of Mahabat oblong, early medieval building. Visible from Khan III with his dogs wearing jewelled Naju Bibi’s maqbara are the 2nd-century CE Junagadh Travel Guide - http://www.ixigo.com/travel-guide/junagadh page 2 caves of Khapra Kodia. An erstwhile fort, built from the remains of a former halfway up Girnar. There are many temples Buddhist monastery, also referred to as Hindu palace, said to be that of Rah Khengar Going to Girnar Girnar Hill, rising 3,000 ft and kunds all the way to the top, all of 7,000 Khengar’s Palace, it is a rock structure and Rani Ranakdevi. A little further are the over the otherwise flat plain of Sorath, steps, including the Bhairon Jap (from where carved into a series of cells, passages and Buddhist caves, some dating back to 2nd CE dominates the horizon and the imagination people would jump off to be reincarnated as stairways. Fortified Uperkot, the sprawling or perhaps even earlier. Coin hoards of the of Junagadh. The flag of Nawabi Junagadh kings in the next life!). Great views of the ancient fort that dominates the city, is Saka Kshatrapa kings, found during preserved in the Durbar Hall has a sun rising Junagadh city and the plains beyond. layered thick with myths. Believed to date excavations, hint at links between monastic over a mountain (Girnar) and a lion (from Fortuitously, as enterprise is never too far back to the reign of Chandragupta Maurya, Buddhism and worldly trade — monasteries Gir), the emblems of the state. At the foot of from religion in India, there are masseurs it gives Junagadh its name — ‘Old Fort’. Its often tended to serve as the repositories for GUJARAT-DAMAN & DIU 558 HERITAGE waiting to attend to your aching calves and history speaks of 16 sieges. For example, the the safekeeping of merchants’ money. HOLIDAYS IN INDIA Girnar Hill is the rock on thighs when you descend from the 11th-century ruler Rah Khengar is which Ashoka’s 14 edicts in Brahmi script mountain! The ideal time to climb up the hill remembered for his defiance of Sidhraj of Due to the profusion of western Kshatrapa are carved. Girnar also attracts Hindu and is just before sunrise, in the relative absence Patan — he married Sidhraj’s bride- coins found here, it has been surmised that Jain pilgrims to Junagadh. One gets to the of pilgrims. Photographing the idols is not to-be, Ranakdevi. Insulted, Sidhraj lay siege there was a mint. The caves have an historically important Jain temples climbing allowed. to Uperkot. Local historians claim the siege elaborate cistern system for water. Greco- 3,700 steps up the cliff, past some caves, lasted 12 years, after which Sidhraj stormed Scythian style carvings beautify the lower after a thick deciduous forest at the base of The town does not offer too much for the fort and killed Khengar. hall, three storeys underground but open to the hill. The steps were built in 1889, after visiting shoppers. There is a local market the sky! To the east of the caves are two funds were collected by floating a lottery. called panchatadi which has shops selling The Navghan Vav (stepwell) in the fort dates breathtaking stepwells. The first is the Adi- There are shops for refreshments on the saris and daily provisions. On Azad Road, from Khengar’s time. The fort was Chadi Vav, named after two slave girls of way, and the view is breathtaking. At over there is a Khadi Gram Udyog where one can apparently abandoned between the 7th and Rah Navghan who are said to have 1,500 ft, after crossing many garish new pick up handmade products native to 10th centuries CE before being discovered constructed it in the 11th century. This looks constructions, you come to what looks like a Gujarat that are marketed by the Khadi and again. The approach of the fort is through a as much a natural wonder as a manmade 16th-century fortress clinging to a cliffside. Village Industries strangely narrow gateway with an ancient one. The rock is cleaved by a narrow, wind- This is the Jain temple complex of Girnar. Commission. Gondal (64 km) Halfway archway, a fine example of the Hindu eroded staircase that descends 100 ft to a There are 16 shrines here, with the biggest between Rajkot and Junagadh, Gondal was torana. The top of the fort is flat and broad well. The second, Navghan Vav, dedicated to the 22nd Tirthankara, said to be the only princely state in crossed by paths linking the principal sites. plunges even deeper to 170 ft. It’s said to Neminath, dating back to the 12th century. Saurashtra that did not tax its subjects in Inside, on the western wall, are two colossal have been completed in 1060 CE. It has Architecturally, the most striking is the the 19th century. During Bhagwat Singhji’s cannons, Neelam and Manek. Neelam Tope rock-cut circular stairs going to the bottom, Vastupla Temple with an image of Mallinath. rule in Gondal (1884- 1944), railway lines was cast in 1531 in Egypt, and is 17 ft long. It with occasional apertures in the shaft for It is actually three temples joined together. were laid, a school was built and a nine- is beautifully wrought and intricately light. Not for the faint-hearted, the volume history of Aryan Medical Science detailed (and was probably incredibly vertiginous or the weak-legged! The There are elaborate carvings on the exterior was written.