Places to visit in Rajasthan
113 places to visit in Rajasthan, each with LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own: Mehrangarh Fort, Amber Fort, Chittorgarh Fort and more. Stand at any of them with the app open and the stamp is yours, confirmed on site, in your Rajasthan volume.
1 Wonder of the world · 9 UNESCO World Heritage sites · 10 National monuments · 9 State heritage sites · 37 Famous places to visit · 47 Hidden gems
Wonders of the world in Rajasthan (1)
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Mehrangarh Fort
A fort standing on a cliff a hundred and twenty metres above the blue city, never taken, its gates still marked by cannonballs.
UNESCO World Heritage sites in Rajasthan (9)
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Amber Fort
A hill fortress of courtyards and mirrored halls, reached the old way: on foot, uphill.
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Chittorgarh Fort
The largest fort in India, sacked three times, each time ending in the mass immolation its defenders chose over capture.
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Gagron Fort
A water fort with no foundation, on three sides river.
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Jaipur
The walled city Jai Singh laid out on a grid in 1727, painted pink for a prince in 1876, and never repainted.
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Jaisalmer Fort
A living fort of golden sandstone: a quarter of the town's people still live inside its walls.
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Jantar Mantar
Nineteen instruments including the largest stone sundial on earth, which tells local time to within two seconds.
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Keoladeo National Park
A duck shoot for maharajas turned wetland reserve, where three hundred and seventy bird species winter.
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Kumbhalgarh Fort
Its perimeter wall runs thirty six kilometres, the second longest continuous wall anywhere after the Great Wall of China.
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Ranthambore Fort
The fort on the hill inside the tiger reserve, older than the park by seven hundred years.
National monuments in Rajasthan (10)
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Adhai Din ka Jhonpra
A Sanskrit college turned mosque in two and a half days.
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Bhangarh Fort
A seventeenth century town abandoned entirely, and the only monument in India the survey closes at sunset.
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Bhatner Fort
A fort at Hanumangarh held to be seventeen hundred years old, on the old road from Delhi to Multan.
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Bisaldeo Temple
A twelfth century Shiva temple by the Bisalpur dam, submerged to the plinth in a full year.
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Chand Baori
Thirty five hundred steps in thirteen storeys descending twenty metres, one of the deepest stepwells in India.
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Deeg Palace
A Jat water palace with two thousand fountains, run once a year from tanks filled by bullock power.
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Haldighati
Chetak's cenotaph, and the pass.
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Harshnath Temple
A tenth century Shiva temple on a hill near Sikar, broken up by Aurangzeb's men and still worth the climb.
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Kolvi Caves
Buddhist caves cut in a laterite hill in Jhalawar, with a stupa and a colossal Buddha.
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Sahastra Bahu Temples
Two eleventh century temples at Nagda, the bigger and the smaller, called Sas and Bahu by everybody.
State heritage sites in Rajasthan (9)
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Albert Hall Museum
The oldest museum in Rajasthan, built in Indo Saracenic style and opened in 1887, still holding an Egyptian mummy.
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Bala Quila
Five kilometres of wall on a ridge over the city.
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Hawa Mahal
The palace of winds: 953 latticed windows built so royal women could watch the street unseen.
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Kiradu Temples
Solanki carving in the desert, and a curse to explain the ruin.
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Kuldhara
Abandoned in one night, and never resettled.
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Lohagarh Fort
The iron fort the British could not take.
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Monsoon Palace
Sajjangarh, on the hill above Udaipur, built to watch the clouds come in.
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Nahargarh Fort
Built to guard Jaipur from the ridge above it, and never attacked, so its walls are as its builders left them.
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Raniji ki Baori
Forty six metres deep with carved elephants at the gate, one of fifty odd stepwells in a small town.
Famous places to visit in Rajasthan (37)
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Ajmer Sharif Dargah
Six hundred years of qawwali and the Urs.
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City Palace
Four hundred years of building by twenty two rulers, growing along a ridge above Lake Pichola without a single plan.
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City Palace, Jaipur
Still the home of the Jaipur royal family, with two silver urns that carried Ganges water to England for a Maharaja who would not drink anything else.
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Dilwara Temples
Marble worked so thin in places that light passes through it, cut between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
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Eklingji
The Mewar rulers' own deity, and their claim to rule.
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Gadisar Lake
The city's water supply, and its ghats.
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Galtaji
Natural springs filling tanks in a gorge behind Jaipur, with monkeys that have made it their own.
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Govind Dev Ji Temple
The Krishna image Jai Singh brought from Vrindavan and set in his palace garden, where the city still comes for the seven daily aartis.
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Guru Shikhar
The highest point in the Aravallis, with a small Dattatreya shrine and a bell at the top.
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Jaigarh Fort
Holds Jaivana, cast in 1720 and among the largest wheeled cannon ever made, fired exactly once.
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Jal Mahal
A five storey palace in the middle of Man Sagar lake, four of those storeys under water for most of the year.
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Jaswant Thada
A marble cenotaph raised in 1899 for Jaswant Singh II, and the cremation ground of the Marwar family ever since.
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Jawai Dam
A dam across the Jawai, a tributary of the Luni, in the granite hill country of Pali district.
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Junagarh Fort
Built on flat ground rather than a hill and never taken anyway, its interiors lacquered and gilded room by room.
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Karauli
A walled town between Jaipur and Agra, with a red sandstone city palace and the Kaila Devi temple in the hills outside.
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Karni Mata Temple
Twenty thousand rats, and one white one to find.
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Khatushyamji
A Shyam temple in Sikar that draws lakhs in Phalgun, the deity being Barbarika of the Mahabharata.
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Lake Palace
A marble palace that appears to float on Lake Pichola, built as a summer retreat in 1746 and a hotel since 1963.
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Lake Pichola
The lake the whole city is arranged around.
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Mahi Bajaj Sagar Dam
A dam on the Mahi near Banswara, eleven years in the building.
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Mandawa
Painted havelis on every street in the Shekhawati.
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Mehandipur Balaji Temple
A Hanuman temple in Dausa district known for its healing rites, and busy with people who have travelled a long way for them.
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Mount Abu
The only hill station in Rajasthan, a green island of oak and rose at seventeen hundred metres above the desert.
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Nagaur
A twelfth-century fort in the middle of the Thar, restored room by room, and a cattle fair every February that fills the sand for miles.
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Nathdwara
Shrinathji, and the pichwai painted behind him.
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Om Banna
A shrine on the Pali highway to a motorcycle, and to the man who died on it.
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Rambagh Palace
A hunting lodge of 1835 turned into the maharaja's residence, then a hotel, keeping its marble corridors.
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Ranakpur Jain Temple
Fourteen hundred and forty four marble pillars, and no two of them carved the same.
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Ranthambore National Park
Dry forest around a thousand year old fort, and the reserve where tigers first became used to being watched.
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Sambhar Salt Lake
The largest inland salt lake in India, worked since the sixth century and pink with flamingoes in winter.
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Sanwariaji Temple
A Krishna temple in Chittorgarh district, known to everyone who comes here as Sanwaliya Seth.
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Sariska Tiger Reserve
Tigers reintroduced after they were all lost.
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Shrinathji Temple
Nathdwara, where the Krishna image from Vrindavan was brought to escape Aurangzeb and stopped when the cart stuck.
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Sundha Mata Temple
Chamunda on the Sundha hilltop in Jalore district.
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Thar Desert
The great desert of the northwest, shared with Pakistan, where the dunes shift and the villages do not.
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Udaipur
A city built around five lakes by a Maharana who had lost Chittor and wanted somewhere the Mughals could not reach.
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Umaid Bhawan Palace
Built through a famine to give thousands of people paid work, and finished in 1943 with no mortar between its stones.
Hidden gems in Rajasthan (47)
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Amer Sound and Light
The fort lit from across the Maota lake after dark, which is when the scale of it reads properly.
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Ana Sagar Lake
A lake dug in the twelfth century by Prithviraj Chauhan's grandfather, with Shah Jahan's marble pavilions along one side.
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Bada Bagh
Royal cenotaphs on a ridge, with windmills behind.
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Bharatiya Lok Kala Mandal
A folk museum in Udaipur with puppets, and a puppet show every afternoon.
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Bishnoi Villages
The people who died for trees three hundred years ago.
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Bundi Palace
Rudyard Kipling thought it the work of goblins rather than men, and its murals are the finest in Rajasthan.
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Desert National Park
Three thousand square kilometres of sand and scrub holding the last few hundred great Indian bustards on earth.
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Fateh Sagar Lake
The lake north of Pichola, rebuilt by Fateh Singh after a flood took the first dam.
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Fatehpur Shekhawati
Frescoes a French artist spent her life restoring.
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Garh Ganesh Temple
A temple below Nahargarh that Jai Singh built facing his own palace, with no trunk on the idol.
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Jag Mandir
An island palace where Shah Jahan sheltered as a rebel prince, and is said to have taken ideas he later used at Agra.
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Jaisamand Lake
Made in 1685 by damming the Gomti, and the second largest artificial lake in Asia when it was.
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Jalore Fort
Swarnagiri, the golden mountain, one of the nine Maru forts raised under the Paramaras.
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Jawahar Kala Kendra
Charles Correa's arts centre in Jaipur, nine squares laid out like the old city's plan.
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Jawai Hills
Leopards living on granite, above villages that let them.
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Kaila Devi
The lakhi mela, and the Chambal ravines nearby.
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Kaylana Lake
An artificial lake west of Jodhpur made in 1872, with rock and desert round it.
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Khimsar Dunes
A pocket of dunes between Jodhpur and Bikaner, quieter than Sam and reached across a dry riverbed.
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Khuri Sand Dunes
Quieter dunes forty kilometres from Jaisalmer, where the villages still build in mud and cow dung against the heat.
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Kota Garh Palace
The Chambal below, and miniature painting inside.
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Machkund
A tank ringed by a hundred temple spires in the Chambal ravines, filling only after good rain.
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Man Sagar Lake
The lake Jal Mahal stands in, dammed in the seventeenth century after a famine.
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Mandore Gardens
Rathore cenotaphs built like temples.
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Menal
Waterfall, and eleventh century temples beside it.
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Moti Dungri
A Ganesh temple in Jaipur under a hilltop palace built like a Scottish castle.
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Mount Abu Wildlife Sanctuary
The forest on the Aravalli plateau round the hill station, with the only sloth bears in Rajasthan.
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Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve
A reserve between two parallel ridges near Kota, with a Chambal gorge through it.
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Nakki Lake
The lake at Mount Abu, said to have been dug by a god with his nails, and Gandhi's ashes were put in it.
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Nawalgarh Painted Havelis
Merchant houses frescoed inside and out in the nineteenth century, a whole town of them slowly fading.
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Neemrana Baoli
Nine storeys sunk into the ground beside the Delhi Jaipur road, unrestored and largely unvisited.
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Neemrana Fort
Built in 1464 on a hillside in twelve tiers, left to fall down, and restored room by room from the eighties.
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Osian Temples
Eighth century Hindu and Jain temples on the edge of the Thar, the oldest surviving group in Rajasthan.
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Panna Meena ka Kund
A sixteenth century stepwell with criss crossing stairs on all four sides, so no two people meet coming up and down.
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Patwon ki Haveli
Five houses built by one trading family, their yellow sandstone facades cut so fine the screens look like cloth.
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Pushkar Lake
Fifty two ghats around a lake said to have formed where a lotus fell from Brahma's hand, beside one of his few temples anywhere.
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Rajsamand Lake
A seventeenth century lake with an embankment carved with the Raj Prashasti, the longest inscription in India.
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Rana Pratap Sagar Dam
A masonry dam of fifty four metres on the Chambal at Rawatbhata.
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Saheliyon ki Bari
Fountains that run without a pump.
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Sajjangarh Palace
The monsoon palace above the Aravalli lakes.
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Sam Sand Dunes
Forty kilometres from Jaisalmer, where the Thar stops being scrub and becomes the dunes people picture.
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Sambhar Lake Town
Salt pans, flamingos and a narrow gauge line.
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Sanganer Blue Pottery Workshops
Pottery fired without clay, using quartz and glass, brought from Persia through Kashmir in the eighteenth century.
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Sheesh Mahal
A hall lined in mirror and coloured glass, said to light from end to end by a single candle.
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Siliserh Lake Palace
A hunting lodge on a lake in the Aravallis.
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Tal Chhapar Sanctuary
A flat saline grassland where blackbuck run in hundreds and harriers roost through the winter.
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Taragarh Fort
The star fort above the step wells.
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Toorji ka Jhalra
A 1740 stepwell buried under rubbish for decades, dug out in 2016 and now the middle of the old city.
Collecting in Rajasthan
What are the best places to visit in Rajasthan?
LOQAH lists 113 places in Rajasthan. The best known include Mehrangarh Fort, Amber Fort, Chittorgarh Fort, Gagron Fort and Jaipur. Each has a stamp of its own to collect when you are there.
How many LOQAH stamps are there in Rajasthan?
113, and more are added over time. Each place has LOQAH's carefully crafted stamp of its own.
How do I collect a stamp in Rajasthan?
Open LOQAH at the place and get its stamp. LOQAH checks where you are once, at that moment; at the place itself the stamp is confirmed on site, with a gold badge.
I have been to places in Rajasthan before. Can I add them?
Yes. In Earlier trips, choose Rajasthan and swipe through its stamps, or import your Google Timeline. Each one goes into your volume with the date, if you know it.
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