Sasaram: the man who built the road, in a lake

The route

• One stop of the twenty rows the site universe holds for Bihar. Maner, the other pole of this road, is enumerated and unwritten.
• The 1780s description of the tomb reaches the gazetteer from William Hodges's travels; this research read the gazetteer, not Hodges.
• No logistics in these records have been checked by a person. Fares, hours, fees and the safety and hassle scores are deliberately empty rather than estimated. That is Phase 3's work, not a gap to be filled from a desk.

1. 1

   Tomb of Sher Shah Suri مقبرہ شیر شاہ سوری

   tomb · 1 hr · 24.9540, 84.0300

   Stand here. On the terrace, at a corner. Sight along the edge of the terrace against the edge of the platform below it — they do not line up, and that is on purpose.

   A tomb in a lake, set deliberately askew

   What the board says: That this is the tomb of Sher Shah Suri, built in the mid-16th century.

   Sher Shah's mausoleum stands in the middle of a tank about a thousand feet square, on a stone terrace 30 feet high and 300 feet on each side. The Shahabad gazetteer calls it one of the noblest specimens of Pathan architecture in India, and then records the thing worth walking round the water to see: the terrace 'for some unknown reason, was not built squarely upon' its platform, 'but placed obliquely to its sides'. The whole monument is set at an angle to its own base and nobody has explained why.

   The gazetteer quotes a description of the building as it stood between 1780 and 1788 — a square base rising from the lake with domed pavilions at each angle, and a bridge of six pointed arches, then already in ruins, running to the shore. Above the base, an octagon 93 feet in diameter carrying a dome that spans 72 feet.

   How you reached it changed twice. When Buchanan Hamilton came, the only access was a raft of bamboo frames floated on earthen pots. The Government restoration of 1882 pulled down the small cupola on the dome, put a pinnacle in its place to match the one on Hasan Khan Sur's tomb, and built the 360-foot causeway you will walk in on. Inside, Sher Shah's grave lies in the centre with its right side turned towards Mecca and a small column at its head; the graves ranged in two rows at its foot are said to be his favourite officers.

   You arrive on a causeway built in 1882. Before that the only way across was a raft of bamboo floated on earthen pots.

What is not known here

Every stop on this trail has its logistics recorded as unverified, which means this page will not show you an opening time, a fare or a safety score. That is deliberate. Nobody has walked this route or telephoned anybody for these records, and a number invented at a desk is worse than no number on precisely the questions where being wrong costs the reader something.

• The 1780-88 description is quoted by the gazetteer from William Hodges's Travels in India; this research read the gazetteer, not Hodges.
• The causeway and pinnacle date from an 1882 restoration, so what a visitor arrives on is Victorian, not Suri.
• Whether the grave of Hasan Khan Sur east of it is accessible on the same visit is unverified.