Before Lohagarh, there was Thun.

In the age of Aurangzeb, Brij is shaken by imperial power and the departure of sacred images to safer kingdoms. Far from royal courts, Jat peasants face a hard question: how can ordinary people protect their homes, their beliefs, and one another when no strong wall stands between them and danger?

Their answer begins with the land itself. Drawing on their knowledge of soil, water, forests, and the monsoon, villagers raise a mud fort at Thun. But walls alone cannot secure a future. Over the years, raids, shifting loyalties, famine, sieges, hope, and betrayal test the people who gather behind them as Churaman rises and resistance takes shape.

Who tells this story? Not a king or a court chronicler, but the fort itself—a witness to labour, fear, courage, and survival. It remembers the uncelebrated farmers and families whose hands transformed earth into protection.

The first volume of The Lohagarh Saga, Rise: Thun’s Own Account is a historical novel inspired by recorded events and historical figures, while its other characters, dialogue, and village lives are imagined.

This is a story of a people and their land—and of the beginnings that came before Lohagarh.