Anandpur Sahibਅਨੰਦਪੁਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ

Why is Anandpur Sahib called the City of Bliss?

Anandpur literally means the City of Bliss, and the name fits no other town quite so well. In 1675, after the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, his Sikhs renamed his settlement of Chakk Nanaki to Anandpur — a town whose life centred on joy in the remembrance of God. For Sikhs everywhere it is the birthplace of the Khalsa, the place where their community received its distinct identity, and one of the most sacred sites in Sikhism.

How the town was founded

In June 1665 Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, the ninth Sikh Guru, established a new settlement on the site of the village of Makhowal, beneath the Shivalik foothills near the Sutlej river.

He called it Chakk Nanaki, after his mother Mata Nanaki Ji. It began as a simple dharamshal: tent encampments and clay huts scattered among orchards beside a stream and waterfall, on ground now marked by Gurdwara Bhora Sahib. Sikhs gathered around the Guru, and the village grew into a town — the home that the last two human Gurus, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji and Guru Gobind Singh Ji, would share.

The birth of the Khalsa on Vaisakhi 1699

On Vaisakhi day, 13 April 1699, Guru Gobind Singh Ji sent invitations far and wide, calling the Sikh congregations to gather at Kesgarh in Anandpur. Before the vast assembly he raised his sword and called for a head — and one by one, five men stepped forward. The Guru baptised them with amrit, stirred with a double-edged sword, and named them the Panj Pyare, the Five Beloved Ones.

He himself then took the amrit from their hands, dissolving the distinction between Guru and disciple, and so founded the Khalsa Panth: a community of saint-soldiers bound by a shared identity, a code of conduct, and the spirit of equality and courage. Anandpur was no longer just a town; it was the forge of the Khalsa.

The battles of Anandpur and the evacuation

The rise of the Khalsa alarmed the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and the rajas of the hill states, and Anandpur became a battlefield. In 1700 the Guru faced a Mughal force of ten thousand under Painda Khan and Dina Beg, killing Painda Khan in personal combat and scattering the army. To protect the town, he ringed it with defensive forts — the qilas of Kesgarh, Anandgarh, Lohgarh, Holgarh, Fatehgarh and Taragarh — and kept a court of fifty-two poets, the Bavanja Kavi, alongside his warriors.

In May 1704 a great army under Wazir Khan and Zaberdast Khan besieged Anandpur, cutting off every supply for seven months. When the Sikhs finally accepted the emperor's promise of safe passage, they were attacked as they left. The Guru's party was separated crossing the flooded Sarsa river; at Chamkaur, he and forty Sikhs took refuge in a mud fortress, where his two elder sons, Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh, fell fighting. The two younger sons, Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh, were captured at Sirhind with their grandmother Mata Gujri and executed by being buried alive in a wall — the sacrifice remembered each year at Fatehgarh Sahib. From the ruin of Anandpur rose the legend of the Khalsa.

Takht Kesgarh Sahib and the fort shrines

At the heart of the town stands Takht Kesgarh Sahib, one of the five takhts, the seats of spiritual and temporal authority in Sikhism. The gurdwara marks the very ground where the Khalsa was born on that Vaisakhi morning, and its halls display arms and relics associated with Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Close by stands Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib, where the head of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji was cremated after Bhai Jaita carried it here from Delhi in 1675. Gurdwara Bhora Sahib preserves the memory of the Guru's meditation beneath the ground, and around the town rise the qilas — Anandgarh, Lohgarh, Holgarh, Fatehgarh and Taragarh — the forts that once guarded the Khalsa's cradle.

Hola Mohalla, Virasat-e-Khalsa and the town today

Every spring Anandpur Sahib hosts Hola Mohalla, the largest annual gathering in Sikhism, when hundreds of thousands of devotees arrive for days of prayer, processions and displays of martial skill. In 2011 the town gained the Virasat-e-Khalsa, a vast museum complex designed by the architect Moshe Safdie on more than a hundred acres near Takht Kesgarh Sahib. With galleries on the Gurus, the Sikh empire and Punjabi culture, and a reference library of manuscripts and books, it is the most visited Sikh museum in the world — over ten million people have walked through it since it opened. A towering eighty-one-foot steel khanda rises in the town's Khalsa Park, a modern emblem of the spirit of 1699.

How to reach Anandpur Sahib

Anandpur Sahib lies in Rupnagar district in the Puadh region of Punjab, on the highway linking Kiratpur Sahib and Chandigarh — roughly eighty-five kilometres from Chandigarh — with the Sutlej river flowing to its south-west. Most pilgrims combine a visit with Kiratpur Sahib and the surrounding shrines; the town fills completely during Hola Mohalla and Vaisakhi, and the cooler months from October to March are the most comfortable time to visit.