Idar: The Town Under the Rocks

Idar looks like somewhere a giant has been playing. The town sits at the foot of a hill made of enormous rounded granite boulders — some of them the size of small buildings — piled and balanced on each other in a way that seems to defy both gravity and geology. Between and beneath them are temples, cisterns, gateways, a ruined palace and the remains of a fort, and the whole thing can be climbed in an hour by anyone willing to work for a view.

This is one of the oldest continuously significant sites in north Gujarat. Idar was the capital of a princely state, and before that a stronghold contested by every regional power that came through, and its position on the route between Gujarat and Rajasthan made it worth fighting for repeatedly. It is now a quiet Sabarkantha town best known for making wooden toys, forty-five minutes from the Polo Forest, and among the most rewarding underrated stops in the state.

Climbing a hill made of boulders

The geology is the attraction. Idariyo Gadh, the hill above the town, is a granite inselberg — a resistant mass left standing while the softer rock around it eroded away — and the weathering has broken it into vast rounded blocks that sit on one another in improbable stacks. Walking up, you pass through gaps between boulders, under overhangs, along ledges, and past several that look as though a firm push would send them down onto the town.

A stepped path climbs from the town to the top, and it is a genuine but manageable ascent — steep in places, exposed throughout, roughly an hour at an unhurried pace with stops. On the way and at the summit you find a scatter of structures spanning centuries: the fortifications and gateways of the old stronghold, cisterns cut to hold rainwater, small shrines tucked into the rock, Jain and Hindu temples, and the remains of what is locally called Ruthi Rani no Mahel, the palace of the sulking queen, whose name carries a story about a royal marriage gone wrong.

The view from the top is the payoff: the town below, the plains running west, and the Aravalli ridges going away north into Rajasthan. Go early in the morning or in the last two hours of light — the rock is completely without shade and the middle of the day in anything but winter is punishing. Carry water; there is nothing on the hill.

Rounded granite boulders the size of houses, stacked into a hill with a fort on top.

A stronghold on the road between two regions

Idar's history is a long list of people who wanted it. Its strategic position on the corridor between the Gujarat plains and the Rajasthan uplands made the hill a natural fortress, and it was held in turn by local Rajput dynasties, contested by the Sultans of Gujarat, drawn into Mughal and Maratha politics, and finally established as the princely state of Idar under the Rathore rulers, who governed it until it acceded to India after 1947.

A granite hill on the corridor between Gujarat and Rajasthan — which is why everybody who came through wanted to hold it

One connection is worth mentioning because it surprises people: Maharaja Pratap Singh of Idar was a prominent figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is better remembered as a general and administrator in Jodhpur, and the Idar and Jodhpur ruling families were closely linked. The town has a modest set of royal buildings and a palace of the period, though the real architectural interest is on the hill rather than in the town.

The town below has its own quiet distinction. Idar is one of India's traditional centres for lacquered wooden toys — bright turned-wood animals, rattles, spinning tops, dolls and kitchen sets, coloured with lac applied on the lathe. The craft has been squeezed hard by plastic and by cheap imports, and the number of working families has fallen, but workshops still operate and the toys are sold in the local bazaar. Buying a set is one of the more useful things a visitor can do here.

The Polo Forest, forty-five minutes away

Idar's best companion is the Polo Forest, and most people who come to one should do both. Around 60 km north-east, in dry teak forest along the Harnav river in the Vijaynagar area, lie the ruins of a set of Hindu and Jain temples dating from roughly the tenth to the fifteenth centuries — abandoned, half-collapsed, thick with carving, standing in woodland with almost nobody around. Sharneshwar Mahadev is the best known. It is one of the most atmospheric places in Gujarat.

The forest is also the state's most popular short-break destination for Ahmedabad weekenders, which means the campsites and the riverbanks can be busy on Saturdays and around the monsoon-green season from August to October. Midweek it is quiet. Together, Idar's boulder hill and Polo's ruined temples make a two-day trip that is completely different in character from the rest of north Gujarat's heritage circuit — less about masterpieces, more about atmosphere and landscape.

Practicalities

Idar is in Sabarkantha district, roughly 100 km from Ahmedabad — about two hours by road via Himmatnagar, which is the nearest town of size and has the closest useful railway station. Buses run frequently from Ahmedabad and Himmatnagar, and Idar is on the road towards Khedbrahma and the Rajasthan border. A car is worth having if you intend to combine Idar with the Polo Forest, Shamlaji or Dev ni Mori, since local transport between those is slow.

October to March is the season, for the obvious reason that you will be climbing exposed granite. Winter mornings are ideal. The monsoon makes the hills green and the boulders dramatic, and August to October is when north Gujarat looks its best, but the rock gets slippery and the climb needs care. April to June should be avoided for the hill. Accommodation in Idar is basic; most visitors stay in Himmatnagar, at one of the resorts and campsites near the Polo Forest, or drive out from Ahmedabad for a long day.

If you go

• Climb early morning or late afternoon — the hill is bare granite with no shade at all, and no water for sale.
• Allow an hour up at an easy pace, plus time at the top for the fort, the temples and the palace ruins.
• Take care on the rock in and just after the monsoon, when the stepped path and the boulders get slippery.
• Buy the local lacquered wooden toys in the bazaar — a genuinely threatened craft that still has working families.
• Pair Idar with the Polo Forest 60 km away, and sleep in Himmatnagar or at a Polo campsite rather than in Idar itself.

Idar is a geology lesson you can climb. An hour up a stepped path between granite boulders the size of houses brings you to a summit scattered with gateways, cisterns, shrines and a ruined queen's palace, with the Aravallis running north into Rajasthan. Add a town that still turns lacquered wooden toys and the ruined temples of the Polo Forest forty-five minutes away, and you have the most underrated two days in north Gujarat. Go in winter, climb at dawn, and carry water.