जगहें

Bhedaghat and the Dhuandhar fallप्रकृतिJabalpur

A three-kilometre gorge where the Narmada has cut through a band of dolomitic limestone, leaving cliffs about thirty metres high that go from white to pale green to grey along their length. The Dhuandhar fall at the head of the gorge throws enough spray to be named for smoke. Boats run the gorge outside the monsoon, and on full-moon nights in winter they run after dark.

सबसे अच्छा समय: November–March, and full-moon nights.

Chausath Yogini temple, BhedaghatविरासतJabalpur

A circular open-air shrine of the tenth century on the cliff above the gorge, its perimeter lined with stone yogini figures in individual niches, each named in an inscription. It is one of only a handful of substantially surviving yogini temples in India, and the roofless circular plan is the form itself, not a ruin.

Madan Mahal fortविरासतJabalpur

A small Gond fort built onto a granite tor above the city, with rock-cut cisterns and a stable cut into the boulder. It belongs to the Garha line and is the most accessible piece of Gond royal building left.

Amarkantakतीर्थAnuppur

The Maikal summit plateau at about 1,050 metres, where the Narmada and the Son rise within a few kilometres of each other and then run in opposite directions to two different oceans. The Narmada source tank sits inside a walled temple complex of Kalachuri date; Kapildhara falls and the Son source are a short walk apart from it.

सबसे अच्छा समय: October–February.

Kanha Tiger Reserveवन्यजीवMandla and Balaghat

Sal forest broken by maidans — open grassy meadows that are the sites of villages moved out decades ago, and now the reason the park's grazing animals are so visible. Kanha holds the only surviving population of the hard-ground barasingha, which fell to a few dozen animals around 1970.

सबसे अच्छा समय: November–March; core zones closed 1 July to 15 October.

Pench Tiger Reserveवन्यजीवSeoni and Chhindwara, continuing into Nagpur

One teak forest along the Pench river, administered as two separate tiger reserves because a state line runs through it. The animals do not observe it; the paperwork does. It is the clearest illustration in the region of what this cultural boundary costs.

सबसे अच्छा समय: February–May for sightings.

Patalkotप्रकृतिChhindwara

A horseshoe valley roughly 1,200 to 1,700 feet below its own rim, holding a dozen or so Bharia and Gond villages that were reached only on foot until roads and power arrived in the 1990s. The valley floor keeps its own microclimate and its own herbal pharmacopoeia, and the bhumkas of Patalkot are consulted from well outside it.

कैसे पहुँचें: By road from Tamia, then on foot down the rim path.

Pachmarhiपहाड़Narmadapuram

The region's only hill station and the core of the Satpura Biosphere Reserve — a sandstone plateau of ravines, waterfalls and painted rock shelters, with the Mahadeo cave and Chauragarh summit above it. In Sawan several lakh pilgrims walk the Nagdwari route through the gorges.

सबसे अच्छा समय: October–June; the Nagdwari mela is in Sawan.

Ramnagar Palace, MandlaविरासतMandla

A three-storey Gond palace on the Narmada built by Raja Hridayshah in the seventeenth century, now substantially ruined and largely unvisited. Together with the Mandla fort a few kilometres away it is what survives of the Garha-Mandla state's later phase.

PatangarhविरासतDindori

A Pardhan Gond village whose houses carry painted digna and bhitti work, and the home village of Jangarh Singh Shyam and of a large share of the named artists who followed him. There is no museum; the interest is the walls and the families.

Adamgarh rock sheltersविरासतNarmadapuram

Painted sandstone shelters on a hill above the Narmada with a long Mesolithic sequence beneath them. They are the in-region equivalent of the far better known Bhimbetka shelters, which lie north-west near Bhopal and belong to the Malwa side of the Vindhya rather than to this region.

Muktagiriतीर्थBetul

Fifty-two white Jain temples climbing a wooded gorge on the Satpura crest, with a seasonal waterfall at the head of the steps. A Digambara site of long standing, reached from either side of the range.

Kachargarh cavesतीर्थGondia

A large natural cave in the Dhanegaon hills that Gond tradition identifies as the place where Lingo released the gods. The Magh Purnima gathering here draws Gonds from across the whole span of the region and is the single largest occasion at which it assembles as one.

सबसे अच्छा समय: Magh Purnima, February.

Keslapur Nagoba templeतीर्थAdilabad

The shrine of Nagoba, the serpent deity of the Mesram clan, and the site of the Nagoba Jatara at the new moon of Pushya. The Bheting ceremony held there formally admits women married into the clan during the preceding year, which makes the festival a clan register as much as a rite.

सबसे अच्छा समय: Pushya Amavasya, January.

Tripuri (Tewar)विरासतJabalpur

The mound of the Kalachuri capital west of Jabalpur, excavated in patches and mostly under fields and village. The Kalachuris of Tripuri are why this stretch of the Narmada has tenth- and eleventh-century stone temples at all.