A ridge, a hermit and a king in a hurry
In 1459 Rao Jodha needed a capital that an army could not simply walk into. He looked south from Mandore and found a lone ridge of red stone standing out of the plain like the back of a sleeping animal.
The hill was not empty. A hermit, Cheeria Nathji, the lord of birds, lived there and did not want to move. Every Jodhpur house tells how he cursed the fort with a shortage of water, and how the king built him a temple and a home inside the walls to soften the curse.
A capital lost and won: the Rathores had held Mandore for two generations, and lost it once, to Rana Kumbha of Mewar in 1438. Jodha won it back by surprise in 1453.
Why move: the low old capital had shown how exposed it was.
At a glance
- Built
- From 12 May 1459, enlarged over three centuries
- Built by
- Rao Jodha, then later Rathore kings
- Open
- As a museum, run by the Mehrangarh Museum Trust
- Allow
- Three to four hours, plus the rock park
- Best time
- Opening time, or the last two hours of light
- Photography
- Allowed in most places, ask before photographing worshippers
- Getting there
- Cars stop below Jai Pol, then walk the ramp or take the lift
- 12 May 1459: six years later Jodha laid the foundations on the hill the locals called Bhaurcheeria, the mountain of birds. Jodhpur still marks that date as its foundation day.
- The first stone: tradition says it was laid by Karni Mata, the warrior-saint of Deshnok, whose temple stands near Bikaner.
- The quieter story: to make the site auspicious, a Meghwal man named Raja Ram is said to have been buried alive in the foundations. His family were given land that their descendants still speak of.
- Told with respect: our guides tell both stories at the spot.
- A smaller first fort: Rao Jodha built far less than you see. Most of today's palace was raised over the next three centuries, each king adding a hall, a court or a gate.
- Moti Mahal: built by Sawai Raja Sur Singh at the end of the sixteenth century.
- Jaswant Singh I: he ruled from 1638 to 1678 and did a great deal of the building.
- Ajit Singh: the boy saved from Aurangzeb by Durgadas Rathore added rooms after he won back Jodhpur in 1707.
- Abhay Singh: his son built the gilded Phool Mahal.
- The nineteenth century: Man Singh and Takht Singh added gates, a library and painted chambers.
- A lucky fort: when the princely states joined India, forts like this began to decay all over Rajasthan.
- The trust: in the early 1970s Maharaja Gaj Singh II set up the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, and the fort became one of the first in India cared for as a serious museum.
- Proud keepers: the labels are clear and the conservation careful. Many staff come from families who have served the fort for generations.
- The family today: read more in our piece on Maharaja Gaj Singh.
Why the walls look carved rather than built
Put your palm on the base of the wall near Jai Pol and then on the bare rock beside it. Most people cannot feel where one ends and the other begins.
Two rocks, one hill: the fort sits on sandstone laid over older volcanic rock.
A national monument: the line where they meet is so clear that the Geological Survey of India declared it a National Geological Monument, the Jodhpur Group and Malani Igneous Suite contact.
Walls of their own hill: the builders quarried the red sandstone from the hill itself, so the walls are the same stone they stand on.
Facts to know
- Height
- About 122 metres above the city
- Sheer wall
- Some 36 metres in places
- Stone
- Red sandstone quarried from the hill
- Beneath it
- Older volcanic rock
- Approach
- One steep ramp from the north-east
- One surface: that is why, from the old city, cliff and rampart read as one, rising in places to some 36 metres of sheer wall.
- Kipling's giants: Rudyard Kipling saw it in the late nineteenth century and thought it the work of giants. What he saw was very practical design.
- No gentle side: the only approach winds up a single steep ramp from the north-east.
- Angled gates: set at sharp angles so an attacking force, or a war elephant, could never build speed between them.
- Blank walls first: the upper palace walls are blank for several storeys and only open into windows high above any ladder.
- Stone like wood: Jodhpur sandstone is soft when first quarried and hardens in the air, so masons could cut it almost like wood.
- Jharokhas and jalis: the result is the honeycomb of jharokhas, projecting balconies with stone canopies, and jalis, pierced stone screens, across the palace facades.
- Learn the words: our architecture guide explains the vocabulary.
- Why windows mattered: our short piece on what a jharokha is shows why they meant so much to the women who sat behind them.
Local tip
Try the palm test yourself at Jai Pol, wall then rock. It is the quickest way to understand the fort.
Seven gates, seven chapters
The climb to the palace passes through seven gates. Each was built to celebrate a victory or to slow down an enemy, and each tells you which king was in a good mood that year.
Facts to know
- Gates
- Seven, from Jai Pol to Suraj Pol
- Main entrance
- Jai Pol, 1806
- Cannon scars
- Dedh Kangra Pol
- Lift
- For the upper part of the climb
Jai Pol, the gate of victory
Built: by Maharaja Man Singh in 1806, after his wars with Jaipur and Bikaner.
- Today: the main entrance. Cars stop below it.
- Your choice: walk up the ramp, or take the lift the trust installed for the upper part of the climb.
- Our habit: we walk whenever a guest can manage it, because the gates only make sense in sequence.
Fateh Pol, the 1707 gate
- What it marks: Ajit Singh's return to Jodhpur in 1707 after nearly thirty years of Mughal occupation.
- Look down: into Brahmpuri. This is the first of many places where the blue houses spread out below you.
Gopal Pol and Dedh Kangra Pol
In order: Gopal Pol comes next, then Dedh Kangra Pol.
- Cannon scars: still visible in the stone, from the wars of the early nineteenth century, when Jaipur and Bikaner armies besieged the fort.
- For children: they love finding the dents, and it is a good moment to explain how close the fort came to falling.
Amruti Pol
- The turn: the path bends sharply and the walls close in on both sides.
- A killing ground: a narrow, climbing passage watched from the battlements, where an attacker could neither turn nor run.
Loha Pol and the sati handprints
The iron gate: spikes on its doors at the height of an elephant's head.
- The handprints: just inside, a panel of small handprints left by royal widows on their way to sati, the last in 1843 at the death of Maharaja Man Singh.
- Still honoured: local women touch them and leave a smear of vermilion.
- A moment of silence: the most affecting place in the fort, and not something to photograph casually.
Suraj Pol, into the palace
- The last gate: it leads into the palace courtyards and the museum.
- A sudden change: the military fort ends and the royal house begins, from blank rampart to carved screens in a few steps.
The painted rooms, room by room
Inside, the fort becomes a house. The seven period rooms are where the kings held court, slept, prayed, counted money and watched the monsoon come in.
Facts to know
- Period rooms
- Seven
- Oldest
- Moti Mahal, built 1595-1619
- Grandest
- Phool Mahal, eighteenth century
- Most playful
- Takhat Vilas, 1843-1873
Moti Mahal, the pearl palace
Built: by Sawai Raja Sur Singh, who ruled from 1595 to 1619, as a hall of audience. One of the oldest rooms to survive.
- The walls: polished chunam, a lime plaster burnished until it shines like marble, lined with small niches for oil lamps.
- Look up: a ceiling of mirror and gilt, and five hidden balconies from which the queens could follow the business of the court.
Phool Mahal, the flower palace
The grandest: the trust calls it the grandest period room in Mehrangarh, and we agree.
Built: by Maharaja Abhay Singh in the eighteenth century as a private hall of audience.
- The ceiling: gold filigree and mirror.
- The walls: painted in the nineteenth century with the ragas, the musical modes, shown as people and scenes, with royal portraits and the incarnations of Vishnu and Durga.
- Come early: and it may be yours alone for a minute or two.
Sheesh Mahal, the mirror room
Whose rooms: part of the private apartments of Maharaja Ajit Singh.
The walls: covered in mirror work.
- Under the arches: painted gesso panels of Brahma, Shiva and Parvati, Ganesh, Krishna, and Ram and Sita with Hanuman.
- Later additions: the chandelier and wooden ceiling.
- Look down: the original eighteenth-century ceiling is displayed on the floor nearby, and most people step around it without noticing.
Takhat Vilas, the painted bedroom
Whose room: the bedchamber of Maharaja Takht Singh, who ruled from 1843 to 1873.
- Every surface painted: including a painted carpet on the floor.
- The ceiling: lacquered wood hung with glass Christmas baubles, a nineteenth-century fashion among Indian princes.
- Two worlds: wall paintings mix Hindu gods with European ladies in long dresses, a kingdom meeting the wider world.
Jhanki Mahal and the cradles
Built: in Takht Singh's reign, a long gallery with jalis.
- A glimpse: jhanki means a glimpse. The screens let the women of the zenana look down on the courtyard unseen.
- The cradles: royal cradles, swings for infants, and the swings on which images of the gods were rocked at festivals.
- Who lingers: the grandparents in our groups, always.
Dipak Mahal and Sardar Vilas
Dipak Mahal: around the Khwabgah courtyard, the fort's administrative heart, with seating once arranged by rank.
- Sardar Vilas: nineteenth-century doors and windows from the palaces, inlaid with ivory, lacquer and paint.
- Don't rush: easy to walk past, and some of the finest woodwork in Rajasthan.
Local tip
Head for Phool Mahal first while the courtyards are quiet, then work back through the other rooms.
The galleries worth slowing down for
The museum's collection runs from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, and it is arranged so well that even people who say they don't like museums ask for more time.
Facts to know
- Collection
- Seventeenth to nineteenth century
- Star piece
- The silver howdah linked to Shah Jahan
- Busiest room
- Daulat Khana, by late morning
- Heaviest sword
- Rao Jodha's khanda, over 3 kg
Howdahs
What they are: elephant seats in silver, gilt and painted wood, many with two compartments, the front for the king and the back for a bodyguard.
- The star: the silver howdah said to have been given to Maharaja Jaswant Singh I by the emperor Shah Jahan.
- Its reputation: many writers on Indian art rate it the best collection of its kind in the country.
Palanquins
Who used them: royal women travelled in these covered litters well into the twentieth century.
- The styles: some domed and gilded, some screened with fine lattice.
- Ask to see: the ones built for long journeys, with room for a woman to sit cross-legged for hours.
Daulat Khana, the treasury
What's inside: the fine and applied arts of the Mughal period, in jade, enamel, textiles and decorative objects.
- The connection: they show how close the Rathore and Mughal courts once were. A Jodhpur princess was the mother of Shah Jahan.
- When: before the coach groups. By late morning it is the most crowded room.
Arms and armour
The display: swords, shields, daggers with jade hilts and matchlocks inlaid with gold.
- The great khanda: a broad straight sword weighing more than three kilograms, associated with Rao Jodha.
- Other famous blades: swords associated with Akbar and Timur.
- Above you: on the ramparts sits the cannon called Kilkila.
Paintings, textiles and turbans
Miniatures: the Marwar-Jodhpur school, with bold colours, big-eyed faces and royal processions.
- Turbans decoded: the textile and turban galleries explain how a man's safa, his turban, told you his community, his region and the festival of the day.
- It clicks here: if you have tried our turban-tying session, it all makes sense.
The great red tent
- Shahi Lal Dera: the royal red tent, a vast campaign tent of red velvet worked with gold, from the royal camp.
- Stand inside: and you understand that a king on the move took a palace with him.
Local tip
Visit the Daulat Khana before the tour groups arrive. Our guides go there first.
The ramparts, the goddess and the garden
Leave the museum by the upper terraces and the wind hits you. Below is the whole blue city, the clock tower, and on the far ridge the dome of Umaid Bhawan.
The famous view: the ramparts carry a line of old cannon pointing over the plain, and most of the famous photographs of Jodhpur are taken here.
Brahmpuri below: the bluest quarter lies directly under the walls.
Hear it first: early in the morning come temple bells, pressure cookers and a vegetable seller calling down a lane.
Facts to know
- Goddess
- Chamunda Mata, brought from Mandore in 1460
- Busiest
- Navratri and Dussehra
- Dress
- Shoes off, heads best covered
- Quiet corner
- Chokhelao garden, western side
- Private dinners
- Mehran Terrace
- Why blue: our guide to the blue city explains why the houses are painted that way.
- Chamunda Mata: at the far southern end, the goddess Rao Jodha brought from Mandore in 1460. She is still the family's own deity.
- In their thousands: Jodhpur families climb to her at Navratri and Dussehra.
- Remembered: in 2008 a crush on the temple path on the first morning of Navratri cost more than two hundred lives. The city has not forgotten.
- Festival visits: our guides plan the route and the hour with great care. At other times the temple is calm.
- The Chokhelao garden: below the palace on the western side, an old walled garden replanted by the trust in the Rajput manner, with terraces, water channels and fragrant plants.
- Few find it: which makes it a lovely place to sit after the museum.
- Mehran Terrace: the trust's terrace restaurant, for private dinners under the floodlit walls. We often book it for a special last night.
Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park
Walk out of the fort's lower gate at nine in the morning and you step into a desert garden full of birdsong, on rock that most cities would have written off as wasteland.
Where: on the rugged volcanic rock around the fort.
The problem: the land was overrun by baavlia, the invasive mesquite thorn brought in during the last century.
By hand: under Pradip Krishen, workers broke it out of the rock and replanted the slopes with plants native to the Thar and its rocky outcrops.
Facts to know
- Size
- 72 hectares
- Created
- 2006
- Opened
- 2011
- Led by
- Ecologist Pradip Krishen
- Best hour
- The first hour after sunrise
- Why it matters: it is now one of the most important collections of desert flora in India.
- The trails: several are marked, from a short loop to a longer walk along the canyon and up to the old city wall.
- At sunrise: the birds are busy, the rock is cool and the fort above turns from grey to pink.
- Visitor centre: a good interpretation gallery and a small café.
- With the fort: our guides pair them on almost every visit, walking down after the museum or starting here at dawn and climbing up.
- For families: our answer for children who have had enough of palaces.
The best hour and the best season
Mehrangarh changes colour through the day: grey before dawn, rose at sunrise, almost white at noon and deep red in the last light.
The first hour: quiet courtyards, soft light, and Phool Mahal without a crowd.
Late morning: the coaches arrive. By noon the museum is busy and the ramparts are hot.
The last two hours: if you cannot come early, come then. The groups have gone, the stone is warm and the city goes blue to violet below you.
Facts to know
- Best hour
- As the gates open
- Second best
- The last two hours of the day
- Season
- October to March
- Hot months
- April to June, early mornings only
- Monsoon
- July to September
- December and January: mornings are cold on the walls, so bring a jacket.
- April to June: we keep the visit to early morning and spend the afternoon in a pool.
- Monsoon: dramatic skies and a green tinge to the rock park.
- Month by month: our best time to visit Jodhpur guide.
- Folk festival, October: close to the full moon of Sharad Purnima, the Rajasthan International Folk Festival fills the courtyards, with Manganiyar singers at dawn on the ramparts.
- Sacred Spirit, February: the World Sacred Spirit Festival brings Sufi and devotional music to the fort and to Nagaur.
- Book early: both sell out, and we plan around them well ahead.
How to visit well
Mehrangarh is easy to visit and very easy to rush. A little planning gives you the fort the way the trust intended.
Take a guide: a private guide, or at least the trust's audio guide. It is one of the best in India, narrated with real affection, and the reason many visitors linger.
Allow time: three to four hours for the gates, period rooms and galleries, and another hour or two for the rock park.
Before you go
- Allow
- Three to four hours, plus one or two for the rock park
- Footwear
- Shoes with grip
- Access
- Lift for the upper climb, some steep stairs
- Temple dress
- Shoulders and knees covered
- Summer
- Carry water
- Grip matters: the ramp and courtyards are paved with sandstone polished smooth by centuries of feet and hooves.
- Limited mobility: the lift for the upper climb helps. Some period rooms are up steep, narrow stairs, so tell us in advance and our guide will plan a route.
- Photography: allowed in most places. Be respectful at the sati handprints and the Chamunda temple, and never photograph worshippers without asking.
- At the temple: cover shoulders and knees. Shoes come off at the shrine.
- Summer shade: there is little on the ramparts between ten and four.
- The trust's shop: good books, textiles and reproductions, and a fine alternative to the commission emporiums in town. Our Jodhpur shopping and crafts advice has more.
What most visitors miss
We have walked this fort perhaps a hundred times, and there are still corners we find for the first time. These are the ones most people walk straight past.
The old ceiling: the original eighteenth-century ceiling of Sheesh Mahal, laid out on the floor nearby.
The Jhanki Mahal view: look down through the screens into the courtyard. It tells you more about zenana life than any label.
- The painted carpet: on the floor of Takhat Vilas. Look down as well as up.
- Cannon damage: on Dedh Kangra Pol, which most people climb past without seeing.
- The Chokhelao garden: on the western side, quiet even in high season.
- The library: ask our guide about the Maharaja Man Singh Pustak Prakash, the fort's research library of manuscripts, and the trust's conservation work.
- A February sunset: from the ramparts at the end of a weekday, when the city is lit and the stone is warm.
- The musicians: a handful play ravanhattha, the bowed folk fiddle, in the courtyards. Listen, and tip them.
What to pair it with
Mehrangarh sits at the top of a natural walk. Everything else in old Jodhpur is downhill from here.
Our things to do in Jodhpur and Jodhpur itinerary guides fit the fort into a longer stay.
Nearby
- Jaswant Thada
- Ten minutes away
- Stepwell walk
- About forty minutes downhill
- Clock tower
- Best at dusk
- Mandore
- Nine km north
Jaswant Thada, ten minutes away
- Why next: the white marble memorial on the next rise is run by the same trust and makes the natural second stop.
- When: late afternoon, when the thin marble glows.
Down through Brahmpuri to the stepwell
- The route: with a guide, take the old footpath from Fateh Pol down through the blue lanes to Toorji ka Jhalra, then on to the clock tower for lunch.
- How far: about forty minutes of easy downhill walking.
The clock tower at dusk
- After a rest: end the day in Sardar Market.
- What to order: a mirchi bada and a glass of makhaniya lassi as the lights come on.
Mandore, the capital before this one
Why go: to understand why Rao Jodha moved.
- The drive: nine kilometres north, to the old capital and its garden of royal cenotaphs.
- When: a good afternoon after a fort morning.
Where to stay close to the fort
The best way to see Mehrangarh is to wake up within sight of it. Two of our favourite Jodhpur hotels put it in your window.
RAAS Jodhpur, under the walls
Where: in the old city, directly below the fort.
- The view: the floodlit walls fill the view from the pool and many of the rooms.
- On foot: Toorji ka Jhalra and the clock tower.
- Best for: an opening-time visit.
Umaid Bhawan Palace, across the city
Where: on Chittar Hill, facing Mehrangarh across the rooftops.
- The view: the fort from the palace terrace at dusk is one of the great sights of Rajasthan.
- Still a home: the family lives in another wing.
Ajit Bhawan and Bal Samand
Ajit Bhawan: a family-run palace in the newer city.
- Bal Samand: Bal Samand Lake Palace is a summer palace by a lake on the Mandore road.
- Distance: both a short drive from the fort.
- Compare them all: in our luxury hotels in Jodhpur guide.
