By Ashish Arora on March 4, 2010
Ramnagar Fort Varanasi Tour
When you think of the best places to visit in one of world’s ancient cities – Varanasi, you cannot miss it. Ramnagar Fort is one of the must see places in city, based on the bank of river Ganga. I visited the fort during first semester of Masters in Mass Communication at Banaras Hindu University, for the first time.
The visit was a part of our college assignment. We, both batches, traveled to Ramnagar by a few big auto rickshaws starting from our department at BHU. The journey was quite eventful and we enjoyed it with singing songs and entertaining ourselves all through the travel.
Ramnagar Fort Varanasi: A visit
As we reached, best part for our first glances was the huge gate and old, deformed walls. Entering the gate, we could see all of the high ground (above the flood level) fortification with a look around. Exteriors were surly looking old and in deformed color but still had not shed their royal proud yet.
We could see many carved balconies, open courtyards and pavilions. Two old canons were standing as the sign of royal security and grace. The guards raise the flag of the fort only if the king is in the palace of Ramnagar town.
Home to Kashi Naresh (King of Varanasi) since 18th century, this fortification is located opposite Tulsi Ghat in Banaras, Uttar Pradesh. The standstill structure was constructed by erstwhile Kashi Naresh Raja Balwant Singh in 1750.
Amid the beautiful vicinity of river Ganga, the royal structure consists of three parts – royal residence, museum and a temple. Built in Mughal era architectural style, the fort is not in a well-maintained shape these days.
Museum: Royal antiques
Then, we moved towards upstairs to check many royal and ancient appliances at the museum, known as Saraswati Bhawan. Once called as Durbar Hall or Public Audience Hall of fort, the museum owns rare collection of American Vintage cars.
You can see here other important items like bejeweled sedan chairs, ivory work, medieval costumes royal Palanquins among other antiques. The museum has an armory hall that contains old swords and also guns from Africa, Burma and Japan.
Among other antiques, we found there an old and discolored musical instrument (originally black but now white). Besides, there was an unusual astronomical clock. This shows time along with year, month, week and day, and also reveals astronomical details.
In vicinity of River Ganga
Further, we moved towards upstairs by the old and dark staircase. Here we saw the light coming from the small door ahead of us. We entered the door, in front was the temple, surrounded by wide railing. Here you can see the majestic and scenic environs created by river Ganga and its ghats.
After this reviving experience, we came out of the fortress and took our seats in auto rickshaws. We moved back towards BHU, again singing and enjoying the road travel.
