A few months ago, I, along with a handful of my batch mates started off on a so-called 'road trip' to a place only a few knew of. (Thankfully, we saw a few pictures on the INTACH Haryana Listing and found its plan on the CSAAA website, so we knew what we were looking for).
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| The first glimpse of the complex. |
Surprisingly, we had no way out but to - (1) Locate the monument, and (2) Make tonnes of observations and do what we do at a site. The final work was to be presented in another four days from then, so we had a little do or die situation over here.
So after a rather painful few hours of speaking to the locals, driving through unpaved beaten paths hoping that the car doesn't break down and, cursing at our luck and the other people who haven't yet left from our campus - We had finally made it to this beautiful domed compound, possibly built during Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign.
"This is it. We finally found it, Pragya", I remember telling myself as I jumped out of the car to click a few pictures of this beauty. As we approached the compound, it hurt me to see the state the compound was in - two of the three corbelled domes had fallen down, there were wild plants and weeds growing all around the compound. Fortunately, even though there were a lot of agricultural fields in the vicinity, there were no signs of encroachment in the same.
I won't lie - the first time we climbed up the (barely there) beaten path leading us to the compound, we were scared af - you know, foothills, agricultural fields, ridge, insects, pointy pollen grains and the melodic sound of RATTLE SNAKES! Yes you heard that right. Although no Rattle snakes attacked us (Oh good Lord!) there was a strong sound made by something veeery similar to the ones made by Rattle Snakes - Good luck with going there, if you ever do! I personally ran down as fast as I could the first time I climbed up. 15-20 minutes later, only after the other half of the jing-bang came to the site did we finally muster the courage to climb up and boy oh boy, that was the best decision EVER! It was totally worth the risk (Getting attacked by a rattle snake? NOT. At your own risk please).
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| A little laughter and feeling a little stupid - we were glad to make it up safely. |
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| No Dome? |
The views were stunning, and now I'm going to stop with this rant. If you really want to check it out, please help yourself.
And since I am a good person, I'll leave the coordinates for you guys here - 28.250023 , 77.049042 (the locals refer to it as 'Lal Gummat' and you'll luckily find someone who can help you around in case you get lost).
Let me recapitulate all of it for you here~
Place: Lal Gumbad, Village Sanp Ki Nangli, near Sohna, Haryana
Coordinates: 28.250023, 77.049042
The compound may be a mausoleum build with a set of pleasure pavilions - possibly build during Firoz Shah Tughlaq's reign (he asked people residing in the Mewat region - the Meos - to convert to Islam.)
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