Heritage- Ancient city Kangra

Kangra, Himachal Pradesh is a historical town which is 18Km from Dharmashala. Once upon a time it was Nagarkot, the rich city founded by Chandravanshi Katoch Rajputs. It was a beautiful fort city of rich temples and vast treasure. Gazni Muhammad invaded the fort, looted the temples and took away the treasure as any other Muslim invader did. The Vajreshwari temple was the oldest and wealthiest temples in northern India. Gazni, and then Tughlaqs destroyed it along with the fort and the town. The temple is rebuilt and is still functioning. It is one of the Shaktipeethas. From Dharmashala I took a day-long excursion to Kangra and Masroor temples.

Kangra Fort is the oldest dated fort in India. It is mentioned in epic Mahabharata as Trigarta Kingdom. Raja Bhimasena, second brother of Pandavas, ruled this place. There is a (almost completely) ruined Lakshmi-Narayan temple in the fort. Audio guide is available for Rs.150. But, students get it for Rs.50 only. It gives all the info about the fort and its history, worth all the Rs.50. Kangra Fort is being inspected to be added in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.

Kangra valley is one of its kind. The bridges are fantastic, in a different way! See the bridge in the picture below?

And see the road condition over the bridge ... the wooden and metal planks make noise as the vehicle crosses the bridge!

There were many bridges like this :) It was a great trip ... I bought enough Kangra tea as souvenir and also as gift for my Dad.

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Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.