जगहें

SirpurविरासतMahasamund

The Lakshmana temple, built of brick in the seventh century by Vasata, mother of the Somavamshi king Mahashivagupta Balarjuna, and still standing with its moulded and carved brick surface largely intact. Excavation around it has exposed Buddhist viharas, a market street and Jain remains on the same site, so a single Mahanadi-bank town held Shaiva, Buddhist and Jain establishments together. Brick was used in a region with plenty of stone, which is the interesting part.

सबसे अच्छा समय: November–February.

Rajimतीर्थGariaband

A temple town on the sandbanks where the Mahanadi, Pairi and Sondur meet. The Rajivlochan Vishnu temple and the Kuleshwar Mahadev shrine out on the riverbed are the oldest parts; the Rajim Maghi Punni Mela runs from Magh Purnima to Mahashivratri and turns the dry riverbed into a temporary town.

सबसे अच्छा समय: Magh, February–March.

RatanpurविरासतBilaspur

The Kalachuri capital of this plain from the eleventh century, with a fort, a set of tanks and the Mahamaya temple. It governed the region for centuries and is now a small town, which is roughly the story of every capital in the interior.

BhoramdeoविरासतKabirdham

An eleventh-century Nagvanshi stone temple at the foot of the Maikal, densely carved with figurative panels, with the Madwa Mahal and Chherki Mahal shrines nearby. The comparison people reach for is Khajuraho; the more useful point is that it marks the exact line where the plain meets the hills.

सबसे अच्छा समय: October–March.

Tala (Devrani–Jethani temples)विरासतBilaspur

Two ruined temples on the Maniyari, and between them the Rudra Shiva figure — a standing image roughly two and a half metres high in which every part of the body is composed of another creature: snakes for limbs, faces at the knees and belly, a lizard, a crab, peacocks. There is nothing else like it in Indian sculpture, and it is usually dated to the fifth or sixth century.

MalharविरासतBilaspur

A site occupied continuously from around the second century BCE, with the Pataleshwar Kedareshwar temple, an inscribed Chaturbhuj Vishnu image and a long excavated sequence. It is where the plain's archaeology is deepest rather than most spectacular.

Ramgarh hill and Sitabenga caveविरासतSarguja

A rock-cut chamber with tiered stone seating, a Brahmi inscription and an acoustic that carries a voice to the back row. It is usually dated to around the third century BCE and frequently described as one of the oldest surviving theatre spaces in India; local tradition also attaches Kalidasa's Meghaduta to the hill, which is a claim rather than a fact.

Girodpuriतीर्थBaloda Bazar

The birthplace of Guru Ghasidas, founder of the Satnam panth, and the site of its tallest jaitkhamb. The Magh Purnima gathering here is one of the two largest in the region.

सबसे अच्छा समय: Magh Purnima, February.

Damakhedaतीर्थBaloda Bazar

The seat of the Dharamdasi lineage of the Kabir panth, and the centre of a very large rural following that sings Kabir's nirgun verse in Chhattisgarhi. Its Magh gathering is a working religious assembly rather than a tourist occasion.

Achanakmar Tiger Reserveवन्यजीवMungeli and Bilaspur

Sal forest on the Maikal scarp, part of the Achanakmar–Amarkantak Biosphere Reserve. It is the plain's western wall and the catchment that keeps the Maniyari and the Arpa running.

सबसे अच्छा समय: November–March.

Barnawapara Wildlife Sanctuaryवन्यजीवBaloda Bazar

Dry deciduous sal and teak on the Mahanadi's northern side, with a set of forest tanks that concentrate animals in the late dry season. Easily reached from Raipur, which is the main reason to know about it.

सबसे अच्छा समय: February–May.

KhairagarhविरासतKhairagarh-Chhuikhadan-Gandai

Indira Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, founded in 1956 and the first university in Asia devoted entirely to music and the fine arts, established in a small town by the ruling family who gave their palace to it.

Champa and RaigarhशहरीJanjgir-Champa and Raigarh

The kosa silk towns. Champa reels and weaves the registered cloth; Raigarh weaves its own and also carries the Kathak gharana built there under Raja Chakradhar Singh, commemorated every year in the Chakradhar Samaroh.

RaipurशहरीRaipur

The plain's largest city and its transport hub, with the Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum — a nineteenth-century collection of the region's sculpture and ethnography, and the best single introduction to everything else on this list.