Chintamani, the fort of a Mughal general
In 1534 Kamran Mirza, a son of the Mughal emperor Babur, held Bikaner's first citadel for a day before he was driven out. When Bikaner families tell you their fort was never taken, they mean Junagarh, and in fairness it never was.
A city first: Bikaner was already a hundred years old when this fort was begun.
Rao Bika's fort: the son of Jodhpur's founder Rao Jodha built a smaller stone fort when he settled here in the late fifteenth century.
- Built
- 17 February 1589 to 17 January 1594
- Built by
- Raja Rai Singh, overseen by his minister Karan Chand
- Open
- Hours change, so we confirm them for your day
- Allow
- Two to three hours with a guide
- Best time
- Opening time, October to March
- Photography
- Rules vary by section, never use flash
- Getting there
- Central Bikaner, a short drive from the main hotels
- What remains of it: its last traces lie in the old city near the Lakshminath temple.
- The single blot: Kamran Mirza's attack came during the reign of Rao Jait Singh, and it fell on that first fort, not on Junagarh.
- The builder: Raja Rai Singh came to the throne in 1571 and spent much of his life as one of Akbar's most trusted commanders.
- Paid for by war: he fought for the empire from Gujarat to the Deccan, and the wealth and prestige of those campaigns paid for the new fort.
- The dates: the foundation was laid on 17 February 1589 and the fort was finished on 17 January 1594.
- The plan: a broad rectangle on level ground about a kilometre and a half from the old town, wrapped in high walls and a deep ditch, supervised by the minister Karan Chand.
- Many builders: Rai Singh built the first palace rooms himself, but over the next three and a half centuries almost every ruler added a hall, a bedchamber, a temple or a terrace.
- Four centuries in one walk: go through in order and you move from the sixteenth century to the 1930s, from Mughal-inspired painting to Victorian tiles and electric fans.
- Among the ruling houses: our page on the Rajput dynasties explains how the Rathores of Bikaner fitted among the other ruling houses of the desert.
Why a fort on flat ground worked
Height against distance: a hill fort like Mehrangarh in Jodhpur relies on height. Junagarh relies on distance, walls and thirst.
The desert as a moat: any besieging army first had to cross a long stretch of dry country with almost no water for men or horses.
Then the walls: it had to camp in the open in front of walls about twelve metres high and more than four metres thick.
- Walls
- About 12 metres high, over 4 metres thick
- Circuit
- Nearly a kilometre around
- Bastions and gates
- 37 bastions, seven gates
- Moat
- Said to be six or seven metres deep, now gone
- Stone
- Red Dulmera sandstone, marble for finer rooms
- The lost moat: it is long gone, but you can still read its line in the ground around the walls.
- The stone: the warm red Dulmera sandstone of the Bikaner country carves crisply and weathers slowly.
- Severe outside: long blank walls and a few gates, then a sudden crowd of balconies and pavilions where the palaces rise above the ramparts.
- Lavish inside: the defences are plain and the living rooms are rich, exactly the opposite of what most visitors expect.
- Water within: wells and storage tanks inside the walls meant the household could hold out for a long time.
- Cooling by design: rooms were planned around courtyards and screened balconies that pull moving air through in the heat.
- The vocabulary: our guide to reading Rajasthani architecture explains these devices, the jharokha balcony and the jali screen, in more detail.
Through the gates, one by one
- Entrance today
- Suraj Pol, the sun gate
- Old main gate
- Karan Pol
- Handprints
- Daulat Pol, 41 of them
- Inner gates
- Chand Pol, Fateh Pol, Tripolia
Suraj Pol, the sun gate
Facing the sunrise: today's entrance faces east and is built in yellow sandstone, which glows against the red walls in the first light.
- Elephant spikes: its heavy wooden doors are studded with iron spikes at the height of an elephant's forehead, to stop the animals being used as battering rams.
- The guards: two red stone elephants with their riders stand at the entrance.
- The inscription: your guide will point out a long Sanskrit inscription nearby in praise of Rai Singh, recording the building of the fort and the deeds of the dynasty.
Karan Pol, the old main gate
The first way in: the original main entrance also faced east, and older accounts describe processions entering here.
- Look at the approach: it turns and doubles back between the gates, so no attacking force could build up speed or bring a battering ram straight at a door.
- Built, not borrowed: almost every Rajput fort uses this trick, but on flat ground it had to be made entirely from masonry.
Daulat Pol and the handprints
Forty-one handprints: small and red, on the wall of the gate.
- Their meaning: they are said to have been left by wives of Bikaner's rulers on their way to commit sati, the self-immolation of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres.
- How we explain it: plainly and without drama. Sati was a real and terrible practice, long outlawed.
- Why stop: these marks are among the most moving and sobering objects in the fort, and most visitors walk straight past them, so ask to stop.
Chand Pol, Fateh Pol and Tripolia
Chand Pol: the moon gate, a double gateway.
- Fateh Pol: the gate of victory, leading on towards the palaces.
- Tripolia: a triple gateway that opens into the royal chambers.
- Public to private: each gate is a threshold, and past Tripolia you enter rooms where only the royal household, its servants and its most favoured guests once went.
A walk through the palaces, room by room
Phool Mahal, the flower palace
The oldest rooms: built by Rai Singh himself.
- The decoration: walls inlaid with glass and mirror and painted with flowers and vases in soft colours. In lamplight it must have been a room full of sparks.
- Notice the size: it is small beside the later halls. In Rai Singh's time a Rajput ruler's private rooms were intimate, and grandeur lay in craftsmanship rather than size.
Karan Mahal, the hall of public audience
Who built it: begun by Raja Karan Singh in the seventeenth century and enriched by successors including Anup Singh and Surat Singh.
- What it was for: the ruler sat here to hear petitions and receive nobles.
- The finish: stained glass, mirror work and red and gold lacquer on the pillars and niches.
- Look up, then down: the colours of ceiling and floor were chosen to work together in the morning light from the windows.
Anup Mahal, the gold room
Builder: Maharaja Anup Singh, who ruled from 1669 to 1698.
Its role: the administrative heart of the kingdom, and the room everyone remembers.
- Red and gold: gold leaf worked into raised patterns on the walls, lacquered pillars, painted panels and a throne at one end.
- The patron: Anup Singh was a scholar as well as a soldier and a patron of Sanskrit learning, and the room has the confidence of a court at its height.
- How to look: stand still for a minute in the middle and let your eyes adjust. The detail keeps arriving.
Chandra Mahal, the moon palace
Private: one of the most private chambers in the fort, refurbished under Maharaja Gaj Singh in the eighteenth century.
- Inside: gold-plated images of deities and walls set with mirrors.
- The guides' story: the mirrors are angled so a ruler lying in bed could see anyone entering without turning his head, a reminder that palace life was never entirely safe.
Gaj Mandir
For whom: apartments Gaj Singh, who ruled from 1745 to 1787, built for himself and his chief queens.
- The look: a celebration of glass and mirror, with painted panels and small alcoves that once held lamps.
- His legacy: a long, prosperous reign, and much of the fort's eighteenth-century richness belongs to him.
Badal Mahal, the cloud palace
In a city where the annual rain can be counted in a handful of showers, a room of painted monsoon was a dream made visible. Older guides in Bikaner like to say the rulers sat here in May and imagined July.
- Our favourite room: also the gentlest in Junagarh.
- The walls: blue and grey clouds, streaks of falling rain and flashes of lightning, with Krishna and Radha among them.
- Why it stays with you: whether or not the guides' story is true, it is the most poetic room in the fort.
Hawa Mahal and the upper terraces
The wind palace: high in the complex, where the breeze could reach it.
- The view: over the old city towards the domes of the havelis and, on a clear day, the red outline of Lalgarh.
- For photographs: painted ceilings, blue-and-white tiles and a jumble of rooftops, if photography is permitted in that section on the day.
Ganga Mahal, the Durbar Hall and the biplane
The twentieth century: Maharaja Ganga Singh, who ruled from 1887 to 1943, added larger, lighter, more formal rooms for durbars, receptions and the visits of viceroys.
Vikram Vilas: the durbar hall of this wing, as it is often called, was added in the 1930s.
- The biplane: the museum's most famous object, a de Havilland DH.9 from the First World War.
- How it got here: accounts say parts reached Bikaner around 1920, and that Ganga Singh's grandson Maharaja Karni Singh later pieced it together with local craftsmen.
- Who loves it: children, and most adults.
The museum galleries
Founded: in 1961 by Maharaja Karni Singh under the Maharaja Rai Singhji Trust.
Paper and paint: Sanskrit and Persian manuscripts, miniature paintings and Mughal farmans, or decrees.
- Treasures: royal costumes, jewellery, enamel and silver.
- Ceremony and war: palanquins, howdahs, war drums and an armoury of swords, shields and guns.
- The Prachina Museum: opened in 2000, it shows the textiles, furniture and objects of royal everyday life, the clearest sense of how the family lived rather than how it ruled.
Har Mandir, the royal chapel
What it is: the family's private temple, dedicated to Lakshmi Narayan, still used for the family's ceremonies and festival worship.
- How you see it: from outside.
- How to behave: lower your voice, keep your hands off the doors and remember this is a living place of worship, not an exhibit.
Gold, lacquer and glass, explained in plain words
Usta work: the raised gold in the Anup Mahal and many other rooms is the ancestor of what Bikaner now calls usta art, after the families of painters who worked for the court.
How it is made: a low relief in gesso or a similar paste, gilded with gold leaf, then painted with fine detail.
Why rooms change: it catches light at every angle, so the rooms look very different between morning and afternoon.
- Usta
- Raised gold-leaf work, named after the court painters
- Sheesha
- Hand-cut mirror and glass inlay
- Lacquer
- Many thin, polished coats of red and green
- Bikaner school
- Mughal-influenced painting, coloured locally
- In the city today: the same technique decorates camel-hide lamps and boxes in the workshops, and our Bikaner things to do guide explains how to visit them.
- Sheesha work: mirror and glass cut by hand into tiny pieces and set into wet plaster in patterns.
- The lamp trick: a single oil lamp in a mirrored room multiplies into hundreds of points of light.
- Lacquer: red and green, applied in many thin coats and polished, gives the pillars their deep glow.
- The painted panels: they show the influence of Mughal artists who came to the court in the seventeenth century, softened and coloured in a local way.
- The Bikaner school: our page on miniature painting explains it in more detail.
- Imported touches: later rooms mix all this with European tiles, Italian marble, cast iron and stained glass.
- Our view: purists sometimes dismiss these additions. We think they are part of the point, the mark of a family curious, well travelled and confident enough to borrow from anywhere.
- The same spirit: it built Lalgarh Palace a few kilometres away.
Ganga Singh's fort
A long reign: he came to the throne as a child in 1887 and ruled for fifty-six years.
The Ganga Risala: he raised and led the Bikaner Camel Corps, which served in China, Somaliland and Egypt.
On the world stage: he sat on the Imperial War Cabinet during the First World War and later represented India at the peace conference that followed.
- Reigned
- 1887 to 1943, from childhood
- Camel Corps
- The Ganga Risala, served in China, Somaliland, Egypt
- War role
- Imperial War Cabinet, First World War
- Ganga Canal
- Completed late 1920s, water from the Sutlej
- The Ganga Canal: completed in the late 1920s, it carried water from the Sutlej into the north of his state and turned desert into farmland.
- Remembered: Bikaner's farmers still bless him for it.
- Two worlds in his rooms: halls for traditional durbars, where nobles sat in rows on the floor in order of rank, beside rooms with electric light and European furniture.
- Look for: photographs of shooting parties with viceroys, and the uniforms in the museum.
- What they tell: the story of an Indian prince negotiating with an empire, and of a desert kingdom pulled into the modern world by one determined man.
- The name Junagarh: when Ganga Singh moved his household to Lalgarh, outside the old city, the fort became Junagarh, the old fort.
- Karni Singh: his grandson, a celebrated sport shooter as well as a member of parliament, set up the trust that runs the museum.
- Still involved: members of the family remain closely involved with the fort.
The best hour and the best season
Come at opening time: the first hour is the quietest of the day, and the air is cool even in March and October.
The morning light: coming through stained glass and screens, it shows the gold work at its best.
When it fills: groups from the palace hotels and day visitors from the trains tend to arrive from mid-morning.
- Best hour
- Opening time, the quietest of the day
- Busier
- From mid-morning, as groups arrive
- Season
- October to March
- Cold mornings
- December and January
- Extreme heat
- April to June
- Camel Festival
- January, more visitors
- By midday: the narrow corridors can feel busy, though rarely as crowded as the great forts of Jaipur or Jodhpur.
- The season: the season for Junagarh is the season for Bikaner, October to March, with warm, bright days and cold nights.
- December and January: mornings can be genuinely chilly, so bring a layer for the stone rooms.
- April to June: the heat is fierce. See the fort early and spend the middle of the day indoors at your hotel.
- Festival mornings: during the Bikaner Camel Festival in January, the fort forms a backdrop to some of the parades, a lovely sight that brings more visitors.
- Month by month: our best time to visit Bikaner guide.
How to visit well
Take a good guide: the fort has many rooms and almost no explanatory signs worth reading, and a knowledgeable guide turns a beautiful blur into a story.
Our guides: we use guides who grew up in Bikaner and know the family history.
How long: two to three hours for the palaces and museum, and a little more if you love painting or arms and armour.
- Allow
- Two to three hours, more for art lovers
- Footwear
- Grippy shoes, kept on in the palace rooms
- Access
- No step-free route through the upper palaces
- Hours and tickets
- These change, so we confirm them
- Shoes: wear comfortable ones with a good grip. The route includes steep, narrow stairs and polished stone floors, and you keep your shoes on in the palace rooms.
- Photography: rules vary from section to section and change from time to time. Ask at the entrance, and never use a flash on painted surfaces.
- Accessibility: limited. The fort is a sequence of staircases, thresholds and narrow passages, though the lower courtyards and some museum rooms are easier to reach.
- Planning around it: our accessible travel guide explains how we do it.
- With children: they enjoy the biplane, the armoury and the palanquins. Keep a close eye on small ones near the low parapets of the upper terraces.
- Dress and water: dress comfortably and modestly, and carry water. There is little shade in the outer courtyards.
- Hours and tickets: arrangements change, so we confirm them for the day you visit.
What most visitors miss
The handprints on Daulat Pol: small, red and easy to overlook, and among the most affecting things in the fort.
The ceilings: in almost every room the best work is above your head. Look up as often as you look around.
- The Sanskrit inscription near Suraj Pol: it records Rai Singh's building and the history of the dynasty in verse.
- The view from the upper terraces: across the old city towards the Rampuria havelis, best in the morning haze.
- The Prachina Museum: its textiles and everyday royal objects, which many groups skip on the way out.
- The change in scale: walk from Rai Singh's intimate Phool Mahal to Ganga Singh's great halls in a few minutes and you see three hundred years of change in how a king lived.
What to pair with Junagarh
The old city and the Rampuria havelis
The way in: from the fort, the bazaar beyond Kote Gate leads into lanes of carved red sandstone mansions.
- Who built them: merchant families, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- When to walk: in the late afternoon light, after a rest, with a guide who knows which families welcome visitors.
- On the way: fresh bhujia, the crisp spiced snack that made the city famous, covered properly in our food of Bikaner guide.
Bhandasar and the Lakshminath temple
Bhandasar: the Jain temple, three storeys of red and yellow stone covered inside with paintings and gold leaf, is one of the city's treasures.
- Lakshminath: nearby, one of Bikaner's oldest Hindu shrines, close to the site of Rao Bika's first fort.
- Why pair them: seen on the same day as Junagarh, they give you the city's story from its foundation onwards.
Lalgarh Palace
The contrast: the palace the family moved to in the twentieth century is Indo-Saracenic, spacious, and built for motor cars and viceroys.
- The Shri Sadul Museum: visit it after Junagarh and the two buildings make sense together.
- More detail: read our Lalgarh Palace guide.
Karni Mata at Deshnoke
The family goddess: Karni Mata is the protector of the Bikaner royal family.
- Where: her temple at Deshnoke, about 30 kilometres south, is the natural next morning.
- Bring: go early and take socks.
Where to stay near Junagarh
For grandeur: Laxmi Niwas Palace, the first wing of Lalgarh, completed in 1902 and full of carved red stone.
For personality and design: Narendra Bhawan, the former home of the last maharaja of Bikaner, has wit and style and a rooftop pool.
- For the old city: Bhanwar Niwas, a Rampuria family haveli completed in 1927, puts you a walk from the lanes and a short drive from the fort.
- Compare them: our full guide to luxury hotels in Bikaner.
- Fit it in: our Bikaner itinerary shows how to fit the fort into one, two or three days.
