Ramkot Fort is an ancient fort situated in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan beside the Mangla Dam. Located on the summit of a hill, Ramkot Fort is built over the site of an old Hindu Shiva temple. three sides of this hill top are surrounded by the River Jhelum. During excavations relics of the 5th ? 9th century AD have been discovered near one of the temples. In the 16th ? 17th century AD the Muslim rulers of Kashmir in safe guarding their boundaries built numerous forts. Ramkot, sitting atop at the confluence of the river Jhelum is one of them. The Sikh Maharaja of Kashmir further fortified Ramkot.
On 12th September 2013 we decided to give another try to visit the infamous fort of Ramkot. The problem with this adventure was just reaching our destination. Although we were here few times before but we couldnt reach the destination. But this time we were committed to go as far as possible to get to this place.
We started the journey from wah cantt at about 8 am. We reached Rawat and met up with few friends from rawalpindi, Now we started to travel towards the Kallar Sayedan. The road up-till there is beautiful, you cant even found a bad patch anywhere. There were few places to see along the route but our destination was somewhere else and we were determined to get there.
We did managed to find a beautiful pond or river along the way to Dhan gali, it has beautiful pearl colored plants and on close inspection, we did managed to find many fishes present in the river.
Around 12, we reached Dhan gali but we were very unfortunate till thst point as the weather took the turn for the worst, it was pouring out there. Our plan was to also consider the option of renting the boat from Dhan Gali but due to the weather the boat men were not willing to give us that journey on any price what so ever.
We waited for the weather to calm down but with no avail. While waiting we did try our luck on fishing but we couldn?t manage a single catch.
After 2-3 hrs of waiting we decided to go to Dadyal and try our luck from there, so we set our sails to the next point to achieve our goal.
We reached Dadyal and Took a left turn towards the Khadimabad, Reached new mangla colony after that and then traveled towards the village of Bheli batahar. Along the way there were many horrific sites to be seen, The water levels of Mangla Have become so high that there were entire villages sunk under water, the roads have sunk and sight presented us with the view of life of people of that area.
Never the less we continued our journey towards the point. There came a point when we could clearly see the Fort from the road just beyond the dam on the next hill but we have get some kind of boat to get there.
After wandering around for some time, we finally reached a market, asked around for a boat but to our unfortunate luck, the only person having the boat in that area was not reachable at that time and his contact number was off. That was it for us there. We asked almost every person there to give any information regarding a boat but everyone was saying that we are late and we may have to leave empty handed.
But we did managed to find the house of the person having the boat and soon as we were about to leave, we decided to give it a last try and try to contact the person, the locals were very helpful. And finally after some time we did find the person with the boat but the weather was still not good, it was still raining, the Boatman was willing to take us there even in the rain, so we decided what the hell, we cant go back from this point.
So we decided to take the boat ride whether its raining or not. But our luck took a sharp turn from there, as soon as we reached the bank where the boat was present, the weather cleared up and sun cam out. Now that was the point where we realized that it was always meant for us to get to our destination. The only problem was the time, We only had 1.5 hrs to get to for, visit it and then return back before it get dark.
The trek to the fort was adventure in its own. The track was slippery as hell and the bushes were hard to navigate through. But we were committed and determined to reach the place.
Finally we reached the gate of the fort. It was beautiful.
We explored the hill but we couldn?t find any land route which leads to the fort, Maybe because of high water levels the route also sank. But the views from the fort was amazing.
We can see the city of Mirpur from there, the fort was small as compared to what we anticipated but it did gave a good view of the war times of the gunpowder era.
We explored the temple, the fort, the shrines, the dungeons and the walls with towers. It was a place of immense beauty.
Anyhow, our adventure was to be cut short as we can see the sun setting down the hills so we decided to leave the area before it gets too dark to navigate through waters in the boat.
Another end of an amazing Adventure though it was one of the best experiences to have done.
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