Talatal Ghar and the mysterious tunnels of Assam: Here’s what you don’t know
There’s hardly anyone in India who doesn’t know about Lucknow’s Bhool Bhulaiya, a 200-year-old historical labyrinth located inside Bada Imambara. It has 1000 corridors and 489 identical doors that are infamous for misleading and confusing visitors, so much so, that people often get lost. That’s quite scary, isn’t it? Well, guess what, there’s another lesser-known place in India where people can easily go missing. It is called Talatal Ghar and is located in Assam. Eager to know more about it? Keep reading.
An 18th century construction
Located in the present-day Rangpur area of Assam, Talatal Ghar was primarily built as a two-in-one palace cum military base by Ahom King Swargadeo Rudra Singha. In fact, it was meant to be his capital city, a replacement of Garhgaon for near a century from 1702.
Often deemed as the largest monuments built by the Ahom Dynasty (Chinese lineage that ruled Assam and parts of North-east India for nearly 600 years since 1200 AD), this brick and cement palace cum military station was the brainchild of architect Ghanashyam.
Currently, this is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its ground and first floor are open for public viewing. While majority of the 2nd and 3rd floors are in ruins, the tourists can also scour through them. Originally, it was a 7-storeyed structure, fortified with brick walls and an earthen fort (Garh) with dikes filled with water.
Two secret tunnels
Apart from being the home of Ahom kings, Talatal Ghar was also an army base. That is why, it had two secret tunnels as well as three underground floors. These were built for easy and discreet exits by kings during attacks by invaders or in case of calamity.
Turns out, the secret tunnels and floors underneath the ground level were not part of the original plan and were later incorporated by Swargadeo Rajesh Singha, the grandson of Rudra Singha.
The mysterious tunnels were made up of a special kind of organic cement called Bora Chaul that is a mixture of regular cement, rice grains, and eggs of swan. Anyway, so one of the secret tunnels was about 3 kilometres long and connected to the Dikhow River, while the other was 16 kilometres in length and led to the previous capital Garhgaon, where lied the palace of the king’s family. Both of these acted as escape routes in case of enemy invasions or other kinds of emergency and crisis such floods.
However, what made the tunnels really mysterious is that no one apart from the Ahom king and few of his trusted men from the army knew about the plans, which meant that whoever went inside never came back and got lost in the maze-like design.
Interestingly, the secret tunnels are only a recent discovery (April 2015) and can be credited to IIT Kanpur researchers and the Archaeological Survey of India authorities.
Three underground floors
All the three floors underneath ran east to west of a long corridor that comprised of stables, store rooms, Gola Ghar (ammunition storage), servants’ quarters and so on. Along the north-south belt lied the royal chambers or Kareng Ghar which was made of a steel alloy for extra safety. There was also the Puja Ghar (the prayer room) which was octagonal in shape and lied next to the royal apartments. There were hidden and movable stairs as well that went all the way up to the 7th floor terrace. The underground floors are also said to have prisons, but till date they haven’t been excavated. However, recently, archaeologists did find an isolated room that they believe was used by the queen during her confinement as per the room’s belongings.