Just visible on the ridge high above the city, the Taragarh was for two thousand years the most important point d'appui for invading armies in northwest India. Any ruler who successfully breached its walls, rising from a ring of forbidding escarpments, effectively controlled the region's trade. Few, however, were able to do so by mounting a siege; the fortress even repulsed the indomitable Mahmud Ghazni in 1024.

It's now badly ruined, enclosing no visible remnants of its pre-Muslim past, but is still visited in large numbers by pilgrims, who come to pay their respects at what must be one of the few shrines in the world devoted to a tax inspector, the Dargah of Miran Sayeed Hussein Khangsawar.

Akbar's court chronicler, Abdul Fazal, records that Mahmud of Ghori's chief revenue collector numbered among the many slain in the Rajput attack of 1202, when - following one of the fort's rare defeats - the entire Muslim population of the fort was put to the sword. Today, a vestigal Muslim community still survives in a tumbledown village inside the walls, clustered around the whitewashed Dargah. For non-Muslims, the main incentive to venture up here is the superb views across the plains and neighbouring hills, and an exceptionally rewarding hike along the ancient paved pathway from Ajmer. To pick up the trailhead, follow the lane behind the Khwaja Sahib Dargah, past the Adhai-din-ka-Jhonpra and on towards the saddle in the ridge visible to the south.


 

Lined by red-bearded pir-zadas, perfumiers, gemstone sellers, amulet hawkers, beggars and hashish-smoking dervishes, this old path can't have changed much since the days of the Moghuls, when Jehangir used to ride up to it en route to a summer palace he built in the hills southwest of the fort. Near the top, look out for a limewashed boulder called the Adhar Silla, which Muslims believe the Rajputs charmed and used to attack the fort in 1202. When one renowned holy man, Miran Sahib, saw it falling through the air towards him, he is said to have shouted "if thou art come from God fall on my head!". It didn't, but squashed his horse; the khadims will show you marks believed to have been left by his finger and stick.

The hike to Taragarh takes around one-and-a-half hours. Carry plenty of water with you (and pockets full of change for the many beggars who line the route). Inside the battlements, the only places to eat are a handful of fly-infested non-veg cafés. To return to Ajmer, you can either follow the path back downhill, or catch a Jeep (Rs20) from the lot at the northeast side of the village, near the Dargah. Heading in the other direction, the Jeeps leave from a chowk on the western edge of Ajmer; ask for the rickshaw wallah for the "Ta-ra-garh jeeps", pronouncing all the syllables clearly, or you'll end up at the main Khwaja Sahib Dargah.
 

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