Ekaant

Far up in the Himalayas, a couple of hours drive from the border town of Kargil, further north from the grand Srinagar-Leh Highway lie the ruins of what once must have been a majestic fort. Rumoured to be taller and older than its famous cousin - the Leh Palace, the Chiktan fortress is shrouded in many mysteries. Legends of its making, numerous sinister and violent events, magical tales of wondrous creations and a heart-wrenching tailspin of destruction and apathy encompass the story of this fabulous fortress set in an almost fantastical location.

Ross Island is a tiny little Island at the mouth of the Port Blair Harbour. It is, in fact, the entry point into the Andaman islands. At one point in time, it served as the capital of the British in this part of India. It was a township that had everything one may need to live a lavish life in. But today this island lies forgotten, deserted and totally abandoned.

Talakad has a long history, going back to at least the 8th or 9th century when it was the capital of the Ganga Kings. In later years, it was also a prominent city under the Cholas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagar kings and the Mysore Wodeyars, with each successive dynasty adding its own architectural stamp to the city. There are 30 temples here under the sand. There is a local myth where people believe that the entire town got submerged in sand because of the curse given by a queen--Rani Almellamma.

The astonishment of why some places lie abandoned and in ruins does not get more perplexing than this. Off the Konkan coast of Maharastra lies the impregnable, unassailable and unconquered fort of Janjira. A fascinating history that begins with a pirate keep from which the Ethiopians carved out a stone fortress. It has held back mighty warriors like Shivaji the great Maratha champion. It lends a distinctive colour to the eclectic social fabric of the region.

Unakoti is a place in the North East of India where carvings of Gods and Godesses lie abandoned on a hill. In numbers these statues are one less than a crore and are in the form of rock cut structures. Nobody knows how and when these carvings were made. With mythological reasoning behind the existence of the statues, Unakoti is a discovery in itself.

A couple of hours drive from Jaipur, in the land of a thousand forts, the fort of Bhangarh has consistently topped the list of the most haunted place in the country. Not much is known about the fort and the entire town the lies sprawled in front of it. Rumours of curses abound and all that meets the eye is a town that appears to have been abandoned at the spur of an instant. Is there a grain of truth in its many creepy stories or can they be explained away through logic?

A medieval town of palaces and temples, and while the temples still draw pilgrims by the thousands the majestic palaces lie silent. What prompted the Bundelkhandi Kings of Orchha to abandon their capital and move elsewhere? This question throws up a plethora of answers and the most intriguing one tells us of a curse that explains why this town has been abandoned twice in the past and will be abandoned once more in the years to come.

Human Life has long been intertwined with the course of rivers and their confluence with the great seas. Lakhpat is the apocalytic setting of life if the river were to disappear. Situated at the mouth of the Kori Creek from where the Sindhu once met the Arabian Sea, it is all but a fortified ghost town whose walls overlook the desert sands as it preserves within it, with infinite care, the remains of a two century old trading hub blessed by the holy men and the beloved of men of exceptional valour.

Kittur in Karnataka is a place where the story of one of the first women freedom fighters Rani Chennama lies in a silent abandoned fort. All about wars and bravery, this episode unearths the heroic character of Rani Chenamma and the reasons for the ruined abandoned state of the fort.

A thousand years ago, in an age when Buddhism was prominent in Kashmir, Ladakh and Srinagar, an exceptionally visionary scholar and translator, Lochava Rinchen Zangpo, set up a world class university a kilometre away from where the famous Thiksey monastery stands today on the outskirts of Leh town. Lonely walls and silent shrines are what stand today, mute witnesses to the times when a wonder monk walked the land. There are as many contradictions to its disappearance as there are musings about the wonders it held.