We left for Gwalior and on the way we stopped at a palace called the Datia fort and palace. The Datia palace is very nice and it was also built for Jahangir. The palace took many years to make. It seems Jahangir stayed
there only for one night. The palace is seven fl
From there,
after spending an hour in that beautiful palace, we went to Gwalior. We reached
Gwalior and went to our hotel: Tansen’s Residency by Madhya Pradesh
Tourism. The food was very good, rooms
were big and spacious. We were in a
suite, that had a drawing room, dining room and bedroom. After this we went to
the Scindia Family’s palace. It was big, grand and magnificent. It was
influenced by European architecture. Only a part of it is open, Then we were
heading towards the Gwalior fort. While going uphill to the fort, on the sides
of the road there were rocks which had Lord Mahavira and other Jain sculptures sculpted
on it.
Close by there was a Jain temple. The Gwalior fort had a
very South Indian architecture. There was Persian, Afghan influence too. The
whole fort was like a temple. It has two floors which were underground. The
whole fort had very nice ventilation. The first basement floor had the swinging
rooms for the eight queens of the kings. It was a room where there were 8 eight
swings. (Now they are not there) and the queens used to have fun. The second
basement floor was the bathing room of the queens. Both of these rooms in
Aurangzeb’s time were used as hanging rooms. He had hanged one of his brothers
in one of the rooms.
Second place was the Shan Jahan Palace and Jahangir Palace.
It was nothing great. The palaces were quite small and not very decorated.
There were horse stables and also elephant stables. Both the palaces were built
on a large ground. After this, all these areas were used by the British. All
these forts and palaces were built in a large compound. There was a huge jail
built for one big gangster. There were two temples a.k.a the Saas bahu temple. All these temples were
vandalized by Aurangzeb. The temples were very intricate.
The Scindia palace
was huge and luxurious. I wish I lived in such a palace! The chandeliers were
very big, almost the size of a room. We went back to the hotel, took some rest
and went back to the Gwalior fort for the sound and light show. It was freezing
cold and a cloud passed through us brrr....there were not many people for the
show, just some ten of us. The show was okay and the voice over was by Amitabh
Bachchan. We headed back to the resort
and had our dinner ; the best part of the dinner was a live ghazal
performance. We enjoyed it as our tiring day ended.
Next morning, we went to the Birla Sun temple and Tansen’s
tomb. We also saw the Tansen’s guru’s tomb called the Fakir Gaus Makbara and
other small tombs.
