Mehrangarh Fort

[Image: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India; photo by BLDGBLOG (view larger)].

Continuing with the recent series of posts showing photos from India—with apologies in advance for anyone who doesn't want to see these, as I will doubtless keep going for at least several more posts—here are some photos from the utterly fantastic 15th-century Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.

[Image: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photo by BLDGBLOG].

Mehrangarh is a massive hillside castle on a rocky site filled with moats, walls, battlements, gardens (holding what was described to us, rightly or wrongly, as one of India's first pomegranate trees), an elaborate palace of balconies, arched galleries, and heavily ornamented private residences, and seemingly miles of strategically twisty, misleading passageways and stairs.

[Image: Inside Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photo by BLDGBLOG].

All of it overlooks a sprawling desert city lined with the beautiful blue-washed houses of local brahmins.

[Images: Overlooking Jodhpur, including the city's many blue brahmin houses; photos by BLDGBLOG].

Nicola Twilley and I spent the entire day wandering out from our hotel through often absurdly narrow streets, down to the city's broad central marketplace and back—

[Images: Walking around Jodhpur; photos by BLDGBLOG].

—heading up and around again to the fort itself, that hangs over everything like a ship.

[Image: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, as seen from our hotel; photo by BLDGBLOG].

As I believe the next post—or, at least, a future post at some point—will show, we even did some zip-line tourism over the moats and castle walls...

[Image: Birds flying over Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photo by BLDGBLOG].

For now, though, here are many, many, many, many photographs, mixing both DSLR and Instagram (where I am bldgblog, if you want to follow my feed).

[Image: Inside Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photo by BLDGBLOG].

However, for the sake of not spending the entire day captioning these images, I will simply let the photos themselves tell the story of our visit. Note, though, because I particularly like this detail, that the spike-studded door you'll see pictured down below is found at the end of a very long, slowly rising ramp, but that that the door itself is installed 90-degrees off from the angle of direct approach. This right angle dramatically reduced the threat (and velocity) of direct charges from battle-elephants, who would thus have been forced to turn extremely quickly in order to collide with the door at all (and, even if the elephant could pivot successfully, it would then ram its head onto the spikes).

Details like this—let alone the dust-covered otherworldly feel of the entire place—give any castle in Europe a run for its money. At times, Mehrangarh felt like a Norman castle—or remote Welsh keep—on steroids (but wait till you see the even more massive and remote fortress of Kumbhalgarh, photos of which I'll also post soon).

[Images: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photos by BLDGBLOG].

Anyway, here are some images.

[Images: Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur; photos by BLDGBLOG].

Meanwhile, don't miss recent posts exploring Chand Baori and the Raniji Ki stepwell.

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Hydro-Monuments of Rajasthan

[Image: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photo by BLDGBLOG].

While we're on the subject of stepwells, I thought I'd post some photos taken of another well, this one in the town of Bundi, Rajasthan.

[Image: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photo by BLDGBLOG].

While we were in India—or, more specifically, while we were traveling in Rajasthan—Nicola Twilley and I put stepwells very high on our list of things to go out of our way to see, having assembled a long list of architectural sites and sights to visit, from castles and towers to temples and, of course, these wells.

[Image: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photo by BLDGBLOG].

Being on something of an India binge the last week or two, I'll try to get more of these photos up. These are extraordinary buildings, in purpose, structure, and ornamentation. Framing the everyday act of water-collection in such otherworldly architectural circumstances is a work of extravagant genius, yet seemingly one of a piece with the grandeur given to waterworks elsewhere.

[Images: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photos by BLDGBLOG].

From the old brick sewers of London—beautifully sculpted hallways for water, all smooth knots and vortices below the city—to the strangely kitsch Greek columns of Philadelphia's Fairmount Water Works, and even the sprawling labyrinth of fountains and spigots that distribute water throughout Rome, hydrological infrastructure inspires and deserves these otherwise functionally unnecessary acts of monumental design.

[Image: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photo by BLDGBLOG].

So the Raniji ki Baori is roughly 150 feet deep. A central stairway takes visitors down to the well itself, passing beneath an archway home to bats.

[Images: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photos by BLDGBLOG].

However, when you get down to the bottom of the staircase and you peer into the deep pit where fresh water was once collected, the dilapidated state of the facilities become instantly and sadly visible. The steps are covered in guano, dust, and litter. Pieces of broken pipe (or collapsed scaffolding) extend from the walls.

[Images: The Raniji ki stepwell, Bundi, India; photos by BLDGBLOG].

These photos—like those of Chand Baori—were taken during a trip to India earlier this year.

[Images: Inside the stepwell; bottom photo (by Nicola Twilley) gives a sense of scale].

These, too, are available in slightly larger sizes if you open them in a new window.

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