A Narrative of Simraungadh

- Pallavi Singh
Roll No: 071-BARCH-523
My first thought on Simraungadh was some history in the plain lands. Hearing from members of my
family, it wasn’t going to be a very big place but rather simply a part of Terai. However, I took with me a
speck of hope that this journey worth be worth of something and furthermost I was going to learn from
the place. Reading and researches had given me a different perspective. With background from history
of forts in Nepal and numerous Case studies mostly of fort in hilly regions, I did not quite understand
how a fort in the plain lands of terai would be in terms of architecture. Watching documentaries of the
placing and doing more of reading lead me to its history and importance.

As we reached to the place in the evening after almost 11 hours to live its environment for the next few
days, we were received most humbly with good meal and a cozy place to spend the nights. Our stay
there would be a secondary school just alongside the huge Kankali Temple and beautiful Ishara Pond.

Reaching the destination after dusk not there was not much to see around. The only thing I first noticed
was a huge tree of some kind which I thought at that time could be a hundred years old, and it looked
quite scary to me in the dark. With its huge structure and root numurours branches coming from all
sides, I remembered the banyan tree from ‘Vikram and Vetaal’ a scary children story I had read when I
was young. For someone who’s scared of many things, seeing a large scary tree was added to my list; I
wouldn’t go near it. Only in the morning could we see the actual hugeness of it and it was somehow
beautiful as well when light touched it.

The next day was a lot of sleepiness for me for not being able to sleep in a completely different place
that too with almost 24 people in the same room – alarms running at 4 am and what not. In a rush, we
visited most of the historically important places in simraungadh, among which the temple of Ranibas
and its surrounding architecture was what struck me the most.