Travelogues

It was a very cold early morning when I reached Aurangabad. I was there to visit the architectural marvel of Daulatabad fort ( also known as Devgiri Fort).

I took a short break at nearby tourist lodge. Bathed ( very hot bath water provided @ 5.00a.m.), enjoyed breakfast ( fabulous kanda-poha )and piping hot tea. Started by 7.30 a.m. The road to Daulatabad fort passes through military camp areas. The fort is situated about 10 to 12 kms from the Aurangabad city.

The entrance area isn't impressive, particularly when you compare few hill forts in Maharashtra e.g Raigad. I took a guide, Mr. Bhaskar Pokhare( who has studied the architecture of the fort closely, knows many facts about history and talkative).He mixes history and the perceptions beautifully in a very lucid language. He is well versed with the intricacies of the fort.

The fort ( mind you it's old relic - between 10th and  11th century )is situated on an isolated cone-shaped hill rising abruptly from the plain to the height of about 600 feet or so. 

The construction of the fort was started in 10th century by the mighty Yadavas of Deogiri (meaning The hill of Gods) empire. In 11th century, King Billama V led victorious campaigns against the Hoysalas, Paramaras and Chalukyas. Deogiri was made capital and remained one till about year 1296. Allauddin Khilji defeated Ramachandradeva then and later Malik Kafur killed both Ramachandradeva and his son Shankaradeva by the year 1312. Khilji annexed Deogiri to the Delhi Sultanate. Later Muhammad Bin Tuglaq renamed Deogiri as Daulatabad ( meaning Abode of Wealth ) and shifted his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad in the year 1328. Due to various reasons he re-shifted it to Delhi. By the year 1499 Nizamshahis of Ahmednagar captured Daulatabad and made it their capital. In the year 1633, Moguls captured it.

The move to shift capital to Daulatabad by Tuglaq was a brilliant one but people failed to see it as the same. Geographically, Daulatabad is almost at a centre place in India, surrounded by lot of land mass from all sides. It would have been very difficult to easily capture the capital than the capital of Delhi which is almost on the border and easily accessible from Afghanistan sides ( from where most of the raiders came ). The fort has a brilliant defence system, almost INVINCIBLE. And actually the fort was never won by anybody in a battle or war. It was always won over because of treachery combined with bribes by somebody very close to the Kings.

The Fort must be visited and the defense system be studied to have a real impact of the same. The fort is built on a 200 metre high conical shaped hill. All the sides of the hill were ( about 2.5 km ) totally made very smooth by shorning the stones. You simply can't climb from any side. The entire fort complex measures about 62.70 hectares i.e. about 155 acres. There is a deep moat, which can be easily filled up by water to make the fort inaccessible. After which there are 3 encircling fortification walls. The hugh gates were studded with metal spikes laced with poison. There are several roads and ways which lead nowhere to fool the enemy forces, many of them are serpentine circular ones and people will keep walking believing they are going somewhere. The innermost moat is very deep and filled always with water. There is only a small stone based way to enter the innermost areas. The road through all the areas is slanting one and paved with uneven stones (few very smooth and few very coarse to make walking difficult). Wherever there are steps, few steps were of a very small width and few a very large width forcing enemy forces to concentrate on walking look out for the dangers of being attacked. The road is slanted in such a way that a major avalanche can be created by simply pushing few stones from the top and the enemy forces will be crushed just under these stones traveling at a fast speed towards them. Then there is “andheri” – a pitch dark serpentine tunnel system carved in rocks with very small entry/exit ways to make it very