Maratha Military Landscapes of India

Look for these

• 01

  Raigad — the capital

  A flat-topped plateau reached by around 1,450 steps, or a ropeway if you would rather. Shivaji was crowned here in 1674 and is buried here; his samadhi sits at the far end past the ruined market street, the court and the Ganga Sagar tank. Stand at Hirakani Buruj, the bastion on the cliff edge, and look at the drop — the fort's defence was mostly geography, and you can see the entire argument in one view.

• 02

  Shivneri — where it starts

  A hill fort above Junnar with seven successive gates on the way up, and at the top a small building marking the room where Shivaji was born in 1630. There are rock-cut water cisterns, a temple to the goddess Shivai he was named after, and Buddhist caves cut into the same hill a thousand years earlier. It is the gentlest climb of the twelve and the one families do.

• 03

  Pratapgad and the encounter with Afzal Khan

  A forest fort at the head of a valley in Satara district, reached now by road. In 1659 Shivaji met the Bijapuri general Afzal Khan here for negotiations and killed him at close quarters — the single most retold episode in Maratha history, and the reason the fort draws the crowds it does. Go early: at sunrise the valleys below fill with cloud and the fort stands above it.

• 04

  Sindhudurg, Suvarnadurg, Khanderi — forts in the sea

  Sindhudurg was built between 1664 and 1667 on a rock off Malvan and can only be reached by boat; inside is a small temple to Shivaji, one of the oldest anywhere, and the walls are laid out so that no straight line of fire runs through the entrance. Suvarnadurg off Harnai and Khanderi off Alibaug do the same job further north. Look at how the masonry follows the rock rather than levelling it.

• 05

  Panhala and the Pavan Khind escape

  The largest fort in the Deccan, big enough that a town sits inside it, with enormous vaulted granaries built to hold a siege for years. In 1660 Shivaji broke out of Panhala at night while besieged, and Baji Prabhu Deshpande held the narrow pass at Pavan Khind with a few hundred men until the escape was clear. Almost every Maharashtrian knows the story; almost no visitor is told it at the gate.

• 06

  Gingee, the outlier

  Three granite hills — Rajagiri, Krishnagiri and Chandrayandurg — linked by walls across the plain in Viluppuram district, Tamil Nadu, roughly three hours from Chennai. It was not built by the Marathas; they took it and held it, and Rajaram ran the Maratha state from here for years while the Mughals besieged it. The Kalyana Mahal, a stepped tower in the middle of the enclosure, is the thing everyone photographs.