Explore Uttar Pradesh
Despite its seventeenth-century fort, the rail- and road-junction town of JHANSI, in an anomalous promontory of UP that thrusts south into Madhya Pradesh, is not very exciting. Most visitors stop only long enough to catch a connecting bus to Khajuraho, 175km southeast in Madhya Pradesh. Like Avadh, Jhansi was an independent state until the British summarily annexed it in 1854, and was consequently a major centre of support for the 1857 uprising, under the leadership of Rani Lakshmibai, its last ruler’s widow, and the uprising’s great heroine.
Like many former British cities, Jhansi is divided into two distinct areas: the wide tree-lined avenues, leafy gardens and bungalows of the Cantonment and Civil Lines to the west, and the clutter of narrow lanes, minarets and shikharas of the old town to the east.
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Jhansi Fort
Jhansi Fort
Jhansi Fort built in 1613 by Bir Singh Joo Deo, raja of Orchha, is worth visiting primarily for the views from its ramparts – to the old town on one side, and the Cantonment on the other. Rani Lakshmibai is supposed to have leapt over the west wall on horseback to escape the British, though she must have had a very athletic horse to do so. Inside the fort are a couple of unremarkable temples, plus an old cistern and the ruins of a palace. The fort also has a nightly sound and light show.
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Rani Lakshmi Mahal
Rani Lakshmi Mahal
Two minutes’ walk from the roundabout below the fort, the Rani Lakshmi Mahal is a small stately home in “Bundela style” (lots of ornate balconies and domed roofs), built as a palace for the rani. The home was the scene of a brutal massacre in 1858, when British troops bayoneted all its occupants (they murdered some five thousand people in all after recapturing Jhansi from the insurgents). These days, the building is a memorial and archeological museum, with unlabelled fragments of antique stone sculpture littered around its attractive interior courtyard.
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St Jude's Shrine
St Jude's Shrine
The grounds of a Cantonment seminary between the station and the GPO hold one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in India, St Jude’s Shrine. A bone belonging to Jude the Apostle, patron saint of hopeless causes, is said to be buried in the foundations of the sombre grey and white cathedral. On his feast day, October 28, thousands come to plead their causes.
