Kota

Kishore Sagar is not a natural lake at all but a piece of deliberate beauty, dug out in 1346 — by tradition on the orders of Dehra Deh, a prince of Bundi, though his name comes down to us only through local telling. Nearly four centuries later, around 1740, Queen Brajkunwar of Kota raised a small red sandstone palace right in the middle of the water and called it Jagmandir. The royal household would be rowed across on summer afternoons for the breeze and the entertainment. After dark, when the palace lights spill across the lake, the whole scene looks borrowed from a dream.

A short drive out of Kota, Garadia Mahadev sits on the lip of a gorge and offers what may be the most dramatic view in the district. The shrine itself is small, a stone temple set on the open cliff rock, and tradition holds that Shiva was installed here centuries ago. Far below, the Chambal swings through the ravine in a long curve shaped like the letter U — the bend that earned the spot its nickname, the Grand Canyon of Kota. Locals will tell you to simply sit quietly for a few minutes; the mind settles on its own.

Kota's story as a kingdom in its own right begins inside these walls. In the seventeenth century the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan separated Kota from Bundi and granted it the status of an independent state, with Rao Madho Singh installed as its first sovereign ruler. It was he who enlarged the fort and palace at the heart of what visitors walk through today. Spread along the eastern bank of the Chambal, it is often counted among the largest fort complexes in Rajasthan. The museum inside keeps royal weaponry and exquisite Kota-school miniatures, while carved elephants stand guard at the Hathi Pol.

Laid out beside the Chambal at Amar Niwas, this garden has been Kota's favourite picnic spot for generations. Older residents recall a time when hundreds of crocodiles lived in the river, until years of hunting thinned their numbers badly. The pond at the heart of the garden, it is said, was dug to shelter the survivors and let visitors meet them safely; crocodiles live in it still. Alongside it now stands the Chambal Riverfront, a spectacle of modern India, home to a bell billed as the world's largest, a colossal statue of the river goddess, and buildings echoing architecture from many countries.

Hidden among thick forest and deep ravines outside Kota, Gaipernath Mahadev feels more like a secret than a temple. Local folklore says sadhus and Naga ascetics performed severe penance here centuries ago. The shrine lies far below ground level inside a gorge, and reaching it means walking down a long stairway — accounts put it at roughly three hundred steps, and some say more. Most remarkable is the natural stream that pours onto the Shivling; devotees say it never stops, and call it nature's own jalabhishek, an offering no priest has to make. It runs fullest in the monsoon, when the whole ravine comes alive with water and green.

This one is Kota's own manufactured wonder, and the thinking behind it was refreshingly simple: anyone who cannot afford to fly around the world to see the seven wonders should be able to see them all in a single evening. The park was laid out beside Kishore Sagar Lake at a cost of around twenty crore rupees. Scaled-down versions of the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Egyptian pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, Rome's Colosseum, Christ the Redeemer and the Leaning Tower of Pisa stand together here. Once the lights come on, the place transforms.