Castles Round Two: India

My most viewed post of all time is a post from 2010 about castles. It has 1445 hits as of writing. I put it's success down to niche appeal and lots of pictures. It turns out, I completely dropped the ball on that one.

I am a subscriber to /r/castles, a subreddit kept alive almost single-handedly by this one guy called Hoohill, who posts a new castle every day. How this guy has such an inexhaustible knowledge of castles, I'll never know (Google, probably), but he posts a lot of Indian castles.

These things are absolutely enormous.

They make European and Middle-Eastern castles look like doll's houses. I had absolutely no idea India was such a big player on the castle circuit. I didn't even know India was big on medieval warfare, either. For me, this is the sort of discovery that really highlights how skewed my Euro-centric view of the 1st and 2nd millenniums really is. Picture time, 100% from Mr. Hoohill/Reddit.

For starters: Khumbhalgarh (they all have funny names, don't they). It's walls are 38km long. Yeah bitch, thirty-eight! And the walls aren't just pathetic head-height token efforts, they're massive. LOOK.

And there's more!

It was built in the 15th century, making it one of the younger castles featured in the post, but it is second only to the Great Wall of China in terms of continuous length in the whole world. I'm feeling inadequate already.

"Do you think they're compensating for something, Donkey?"

Khumbhalgarh's older and bigger brother is Chittorgarh (the '-garh' suffix is the noise you make when you plummet from the top of the walls). The walls aren't as long but it covers a greater area, making it the biggest in India, and who knows, probably the world, too. Somehow it was successfully sacked three times. How? It would surely be harder to breach than a Banks, Maldini, Moore, Vidic, Lahm backline. I can't find any pictures that get the whole thing in, so here is the Google Maps URL

A tiny portion of the walls

Another view of Chittorgarh

Aight, then there's this one:

It's called Agra, which I'd say is a pretty decent name for a castle. It's all red and stuff, and has three massive walls stacked on top of each other, just in case, y'know, the invaders are all adept pole-vaulters or something.

Been to the top of the tower? The guidebook says it's a must-see.

The gems held within

For no other reason than it also sounds vaguely like the previous one, this is next one is Kangra Fortress. It looks pretty European-y to my eyes, but what do I know. It must be doubly hard to capture because it would surely be all but impossible to resist the urge to gawp at the amazing landscape below. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Rohit, have you seen the view?

It's like a fucking fairytale or something

Stop it, India. Just stop it. You're ruining it for the other kids.

While we're on the subject of ridiculously pretty castles, try Amer castle on for size. Get an eyeful o' this:

Mad jel

But don't worry, it doesn't look as good from every angle. PSYCHE! Yes it does.

Let's go out and look at some of the old medieval buildings and
that, because I bet they look even better at night, all lit up

This is Mudgal castle:

According to Hoohill, it is 'a gigantic, long-forgotten fortress.' How do you just forget about a fortress like that? A castle that would be the gem in practically any other nation's castle portfolio is just another standard castle in India. Those spoilt gits. The gates:

Back when Hadrian's Wall was considered an impressive feat of engineering in (modern day) England, India was building stuff like Rajgad Fortress.

A "lower gate" apparently. Doesn't look too low to me

They build a fortress on that thing when England was nothing and the Romans were at their peak

In a similar vein is Lohagad Fortress, which is all run down and overgrown and beautiful. Like Rajgad, it's well over 2000 years old.

It's also pretty high up.

I bet this spur really irritated the civil engineers - "We have to wall the whole thing?!"

I'm not even close to running out of massive/beautiful Indian fortresses, but that's more than enough to get you started. I should probably have dropped this link at the start of the post, but here is my resource: r/castles filtered for India. Nearly all by Hoohill - what a legend.

One last one - Gwalior - 'one of history's greatest fortresses'. The place where zero was used for the first time (say whaaaaaa!). Tough and beautiful. Just like a Banks, Maldini, Moore, Vidic, Lahm backline.

A real hero, and a real human being