Perched on the edge on the great Thar Desert in the heart of rural India, the unique fort at Khimsar offers a wide range of experiences. The battle-scarred walls and turrets remind one of the glorious past of this place.
Location
Khimsar is a small village situated around 92 km on the highway from Jodhpur to Bikaner in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. The village of Khimsar provides an excellent starting point to explore the district of Nagaur, which lies midway between Jodhpur and Bikaner. There are good road connections from Khimsar to other important tourist destinations in the region including Jodhpur, Bikaner, and Nagaur.
History
On the highway from Jodhpur to Bikaner, an hour out of the Rathore stronghold, past the medieval temples of Osian with their stunning stone carvings, is the small township of Khimsar. Established by a scion of the house of Jodhpur, Khimsar was once a small kingdom. And though Jodhpur royalty claim it was never independent, the Thakurs of Khimsar claim that not only was it an individual entity, but that one of the visitors to their ancestral fort was Emperor Aurangzeb himself. The construction of the fort initially began in 1523 but the family moved in to the fort only during the 18th century after a new zenana or ladies wing was constructed. Thakur Onkar Singh, the present occupant of the fort, built a regal wing for himself in 1940s. The pride of Khimsar today is still that fort, 450 years old and currently home to the 18th, 19th, and 20th generations of the Khimsar thakurs.
