Guru Gobind Singh Ji spent about three years at Paonta on the Yamuna, in the territory of the Raja of Sirmaur, from about 1685.
It is the literary period. He kept a court of fifty-two poets, commissioned translations, and composed a substantial part of the work attributed to him. The Jaap Sahib and parts of the Dasam Granth material are placed here.
The Battle of Bhangani was fought nearby in 1688 and he returned to Anandpur after it.
Gurdwara Paonta Sahib stands on the bank. The site holds weapons and manuscripts associated with the period.
Three years in a hill state on a river produced the largest body of writing by any Guru after Guru Arjan Dev Ji, and the town is in Himachal Pradesh, which means it is outside the SGPC's jurisdiction and outside most accounts of Punjab.
The body of writing composed or compiled in this period, including translations of Sanskrit and Persian narrative into Braj, is the largest associated with any Guru after the compilation of the Adi Granth.
The poets were paid and housed, and much of what they produced was carried away or lost in the evacuation of Anandpur in 1704. What survives is a fraction of it.
Bhangani was fought against a coalition of hill rajas and is the first battle described in the Bachittar Natak, which is the closest thing to a first person account left by a Guru.