Trek
to the King's Fort - Raigad.
The Gibraltar
of East
4th
Nov & 19th Nov 2006
More
exciting photos of the trek
"This Fort
is formidable. All sides appear as if chiseled from a mountain of solid
rock. Not even a blade of grass grows on the sheer vertical rock. This
is a paragon to house the throne". - Shivaji
The sheer vertical rock face tearing into the sky above appears defiant
and insurmountable. It has stemmed many a foreign aggression and protected
the Hindavi Swarajya during those historic times.
Raigad was the capital of Shivaji's kingdom. It is a hill fortress situated
in the Raigad District of Maharashtra, India. It was constructed by Shivaji
between 1657 and 1670. He was crowned King of Hindawi Swaraj, the formal
name of what later developed into the Maratha Empire, here in 1674.
Shivaji had seized the site, then the fortress of Rairi, from the royal
house of the Mores, a junior or Cadet dynasty descended from the Maurya
imperial dynasty that once ruled large swathes of the subcontinent. The
last More king ("Raja") was a feudatory of the Sultan of Bijapur.
Shivaji renovated and expanded the Fortress of Rairi and renamed it Raigad,
or the King's Fort, the name he gave it when he selected it for his capital
when he was in the process of assuming the royal character.
"Fort Raigad is much more than a mere tourist spot. It is a sacred place of pilgrimage, which has left an imprint of the grand vision of Hindavi Swarajya as cherished by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj."
