Mar: सिंधुदुर्ग sindhudurga
‘Sea Fort’ -Fort/District, Maharashtra.
From Mar: sindhu, ‘ocean’, ‘sea’; durga, ‘fort’.
Sindhudurg is a fort built on a small island off the coast of Malvan by Shivaji Maharaj, the 17thC founder of the Maratha Empire.
The fort was built on a 20 hectare plot with a 3km rampart, and its imposing sea-proof walls are 10m high and 3m feet thick. It was designed to be hidden from invaders approaching from the Arabian Sea, mostly the new generation of foreign merchants and colonizers (English, Dutch, French and Portuguese).
There was clearly something worth defending here because Sindhudurg, one of Maharashtra’s smallest districts, has 37 forts.
Underwater rocks make the way to Sindhudurg Fort difficult Debazoti1985