Nepalgunj and Kathmandu, Nepal - In one corner of Kathmandu's Jame Masjid, a stone's throw from the former-royal-palace-turned-museum, lies the tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal - forlorn and shorn of its past grandeur. Mahal was the queen of Awadh, a princely state in neighbouring India, and the face of the 1857 rebellion against the British. She fled the Indian city of Lucknow after the revolt was crushed, and the then ruler of Nepal, Jung Bahadur Thapa, who had taken his army to help the British quell the rebellion and plunder the city, offered her asylum. M Hussain, the secretary of Jame Masjid, says that many of Mahal's supporters followed her to Nepal.

Nepalgunj and Kathmandu, Nepal - In one corner of Kathmandu's Jame Masjid, a stone's throw from the former-royal-palace-turned-museum, lies the tomb of Begum Hazrat Mahal - forlorn and shorn of its past grandeur.

Mahal was the queen of Awadh, a princely state in neighbouring India, and the face of the 1857 rebellion against the British. She fled the Indian city of Lucknow after the revolt was crushed, and the then ruler of Nepal, Jung Bahadur Thapa, who had taken his army to help the British quell the rebellion and plunder the city, offered her asylum. 

M Hussain, the secretary of Jame Masjid, says that many of Mahal's supporters followed her to Nepal.