We were in the city of Gour, the capital of ancient Bengal. Nothing remains of that city, of course, except about a dozen monuments from the time when the Turks ruled Bengal: they stand amid mango orchards and mud-house villages of present-day Malda like oases of architectural splendour. They all predate the Taj Mahal by 100 to 200 years but stand nearly intact, surrounded by manicured lawns, with hardly a soul—neither a caretaker nor a visitor—to be spotted around these buildings, even though they are under the protection of the Archaeological Survey of India, or ASI. I could have hammered a
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Ancient capital of Bengal - Gour
