Chet Singh Fort & Palace

Chet Singh Fort & Palace is the great red-sandstone stronghold of the Benares royal house, rising sheer from the stone steps of Shivala Ghat on the southern arc of Varanasi's riverfront.

• Built in the mid-18th century as a compact riverside fortress, it is the most martial silhouette on this stretch of the Ganga — turreted bastion walls, deep-set arched windows, monumental gateways with broad staircases, and two massive corner structures crowned by octagonal domed pavilions.
• On the terrace overlooking the river stands a pavilion where the Maharaja once appeared to his people, and within the walled compound sit three modest state temples of Shiva added over the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Because it lies away from the busiest pilgrim ghats, the fort is best appreciated in unhurried fashion, and it is at its most photogenic from a boat at first light, when the sandstone glows warm amber above the water.
• The fort carries one of the most stirring chapters of India's early colonial history.
• Raja Balwant Singh, the founder of the Benares royal line, is credited with raising the riverside fort around the mid-1700s with his engineer Baijnath Mishra; his successor Chait Singh, who took the throne in 1770, expanded the palace on the ghat.
• In 1781 Chait Singh refused the escalating cash and cavalry demands of Governor-General Warren Hastings and the British East India Company.
• The confrontation erupted into an armed uprising at Shivala in which Chait Singh's supporters overwhelmed the Company's guard and forced Hastings himself to flee the city.
• Chait Singh ultimately lost, and the fort passed to British control for over a century before Maharaja Prabhu Narayan Singh restored it to the royal house in 1895.
• Today the fort-palace is held by the Kashiraj Trust of the Maharaja and is not open to regular public visitation — its gates open only once or twice a year for private celebrations.
• Travellers admire it from the ghat steps or, best of all, from a rowboat drifting past its river face.
• The classic frame lines up the octagonal pavilions and bastion walls against the sunrise, and during Dev Deepawali the ramparts are outlined in lamps and light.
• Allow half an hour or so at the ghat, ideally folded into a slow boat ride past the neighbouring Assi and Kedar Ghats.
• For the vegetarian traveller, this corner of Varanasi could not be easier.
• The old city is overwhelmingly satvik and pure-vegetarian, and the lanes just above the fort — around Shivala and Assi — hold some of the city's most-loved meat-free kitchens.
• Aum Cafe serves wholesome vegetarian and vegan bowls, pancakes and lassis a short walk away; Pizzeria Vaatika Cafe is famous for wood-fired vegetarian pizzas made with homemade cheese; and Baati Chokha dishes out rustic, 100% pure-vegetarian litti-chokha and Purvanchali thalis on leaf plates.
• Nothing here needs a second thought about meat, fish, egg or alcohol — it is honest, hearty and entirely vegetarian.