West of the Khetri Mahal, at the foot of the conical Kana Pahar hill, are Badalgarh - the only fort remaining from the Nawab period - and the Dargah of Kamaruddin Shah, with a mosque, madrasa and collection of tombs enclosed in a small complex. Behind the madrasa stands a monument to the infant son of Henry Forster, commander of the British-run Shekhawati Brigade, who died in 1841. Only one of the five gates of "Forster Gunge", the Shekhawati Brigade's cantonment, survives.

In the north of Jhunjhunu, the Mertani Baori is the region's most impressive step-well. If you head up there, make the short detour east to the extraordinary Rani Sati Mandir . Few foreigners ever visit this shrine, but, as the centre of a phenomenally popular Sati Mata cult, it is reputedly the richest in the country after Tirupati (in Andhra Pradesh), receiving hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year and millions of rupees in donations. Its immense popularity bears witness to the enduring awe with which satis - women who commit ritual suicide by climbing on the funeral pyre of their husband - are viewed in the state.


 

Although banned by the British in 1829, the practice has survived in parts of rural Rajasthan; forty cases are known to have occurred since Independence - the latest, and most infamous, being that of Roop Kanwar, a beautiful eighteen-year-old Rajput girl who committed self-immolation in 1987 in the village of Deorala, near Jaipur. The sati commemorated here was performed by a merchant's wife in 1595. Her image, rendered in tile- and mirror-work, adorns the ceiling of the main prayer hall, while a sequence of panels on the north wall relates the legend surrounding the events of her death. back

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