It was during my travel back from Finland. I had an Indian doctor as my neighbor in flight. As usual we started talking about India, politicians and travel. Then later we realized both of us are from Bangalore and we both are Kannadigas but chatting in English. Then we continued our conversations in Kannada about castles & forts in Scotland etc. That is when he told me “namma chitradurgada kote munde avenu illa biDi” roughly translates too “The castles or forts of Scotland are nothing in front of Fort of Chitradurga“. That is when I got really curious about the fort. Until then I had heard about it from the Film Nagarahavu and from the legendary story of Onake Obavva.
In the picture above you can see one of the mega entrances to the fort. There are five walls visible today. Each wall has a mega gate. This is one of them. two other fort walls are lost inside the new Chitradurga city.
This time when we started planning our North Karnataka trip I made sure to Include Chitradurga. I have not been to Scotland but this for is just breath taking. I have not seen any other fort as defensive as this. Chitradurga Fort is also called as Kallina Kote (stone fort), Ukinna kote (fort of steel), Yelu Suttina kote (Fort of seven walls). It has 19 gateways, 38 posterior entrances, a palace, many temples, a maTa, a mosque, granaries, oil pits, four secret entrances and water tanks. Read the rest of this entry »
