Ganga Golden Jubilee Museum

The Ganga Golden Jubilee Museum, housed in a handsome building opposite Junagarh Fort, is Bikaner's main museum and worth an hour of your time. The collection spans a considerable range: Harappan (Indus Valley) pottery and terracottas, medieval armour and weapons, a good numismatic collection, Rajput miniature paintings, and decorative arts from the Bikaner school.

The museum is particularly strong on local history, including material from the Bikaner State archives and exhibits on the Royal Camel Corps. Labelling is uneven — some sections are well explained, others barely at all — but the quality of individual objects compensates. The building itself, with its Indo-Saracenic facade, is an attraction in its own right.

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The museum was built in 1937 to mark the 50th year of Maharaja Ganga Singh's reign. Ganga Singh is something of a local hero — he modernised Bikaner's administration, oversaw a vast irrigation project that turned desert into farmland, and represented India at the Treaty of Versailles. The museum's collection reflects his range of interests: Indus Valley artefacts sit alongside World War I-era weapons and exquisite Gupta-period terracottas.

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