History of Derawar Fort, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

To the southeast of Dera Nawab, on the edge of the Cholistan Desert, make an exciting day's outing from either Ahmadpur East or Bahawalpur. The massive fort towers over the surrounding semi-desert and is visible from miles around. The huge walls, supported by enormous round buttresses, stand 40 meters (130 feet) high and are 1.5 kilometers (a mile) in circumference.
Derawar Fort is a large square fortress in Pakistan near Bahawalpur. The forty bastions of Derawar are visible for many miles in Cholistan Desert. The walls have acircumference of 1500 metres and stand up to thirty metres high.
The first fort on the site was built by Hindu Rajput, Rai Jajja Bhati of Jaisalmer. It remained in the hands of the royal family of Jaisalmer until captured and completely rebuilt by the nawabs of Bahawalpur in 1733. In 1747, the fort slipped from the hands of the Abbasis owing to Bahawal Khan's preoccupations at
Shikarpur. Nawab Mubarak Khan took the stronghold back in 1804.
The nearby mosque was modelled after that in the Red Fort of Delhi. There is also a royal necropolis of the Abbasi family, which still owns the stronghold. The area is rich in archaeological artifacts associated with Ganweriwala, a vast but as-yet-unexcavated city of the Indus Valley Civilization

You can make an intersting excursions from Bahawalpur, full day trip requiring a four-wheel drive vehicle to Derawar Fort (Qila Derawar), through the semi-desert of cholistan. The drive takes three to four hours through fasinating barren landscape. The cholistan desert covers 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq miles) and extends into the Thar desert to India. The whole area was once well watered by the river Ghaggar, now called the Hakara in Pakistan, and known in vedic times as the Sarasvati.

All along the 500 km (300 miles) of the dried-up river are over 400 archaeologicalsites. Most of these date from the indus civilisation, 45,00 years ago, and are clustered round Derawar Fort, the only perennial water hole in the desert. There is very little to make out today. The desert has an average rainfall of 12 cm (5 inches) a year, and there is very littlecivilisation. The underground water is brackish. The few people of the desert dig artificial wells in the troughs between the sand hills and use camels to draw the water up.