Places

Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve and FortWildlifeUmaria

Sal forest, grassland meadows and sandstone cliffs around a hill fort of great antiquity, formerly the Rewa rulers' shooting preserve and declared a national park in 1968 and a tiger reserve in 1993. The fort on the plateau top carries rock-cut Vishnu images, of which the reclining Shesh Shaiya beside a spring is the best known, and is not open for general access. The reserve is divided into the Tala, Magdhi and Khitauli zones, and it was one of the source populations used to restock Panna after that reserve lost every tiger it had.

Best time: October–June; the forest closes for the monsoon.

Maihar — Sharda Devi templePilgrimageMaihar

A hilltop shrine on Trikut hill reached by more than a thousand steps or by ropeway. Local tradition makes Alha and Udal — the Banaphar warriors of the Bundelkhandi ballad, who served the Chandela king of Mahoba — the goddess's first devotees, and holds that Alha still offers worship before dawn, which is why the shrine is said to be found already garlanded when it opens. It is one of the largest Navratri gatherings in central India, twice a year.

Best time: October–March; Navratri in Chaitra and Ashwin for the crowds.

Rewa Fort and the Baghel MuseumHeritageRewa

The Baghela seat above the Bichhiya, with a museum holding the Rewa court's collection — arms, sculpture and photographs — and the mounted body of Mohan, the white tiger from which every white tiger in captivity descends. Seeing the animal stuffed in a glass case is the most honest possible introduction to the story.

Mukundpur White Tiger Safari and ZooWildlifeRewa

A state-run safari and zoo opened in 2016 near Mukundpur, established specifically around the white tiger and named for Maharaja Martand Singh. It is the only facility of its kind in the region and exists because the white tiger has become Rewa's brand.

GovindgarhHeritageRewa

A Rewa royal palace beside a large lake, and the centre of the Sundarja mango belt. The palace was where the captured white tiger Mohan was kept and bred, and the orchards around it are the source of the region's only GI-registered product.

Chachai FallsNatureRewa

A single vertical drop of about 130 metres where the Bihad, a tributary of the Tamsa, leaves the Rewa plateau — usually ranked around the twenty-third highest waterfall in India. The fall exists because the river runs across flat-lying sandstone and then meets a rejuvenated knick point at the scarp edge, so it drops rather than descends.

Best time: August–October, while there is water in it.

Keoti FallsNatureRewa

The Mahana river falling off the same scarp a short distance from Chachai. Standard figures give it about 98 metres, though some sources put it at 130; the discrepancy is unresolved and worth knowing before repeating either number.

Best time: August–October.

Bahuti FallsNatureMauganj

About 145 metres on the Nihai (also called Odda), the highest waterfall in Madhya Pradesh, dropping off the north-eastern edge of the plateau into the Mauganj valley. Seasonal, and effectively dry from February.

Best time: August–October.

Purwa FallsNatureRewa

The Tamsa itself going over the scarp in a broad curtain, with a canal head above it — the closest of the Rewa falls to the city and the easiest to reach.

Best time: August–October.

Sanjay-Dubri Tiger ReserveWildlifeSidhi

A large, thinly visited reserve of sal forest along the Banas and the Gopad in the Son basin, contiguous with Guru Ghasidas in Chhattisgarh, which makes the combined block one of the more important tiger corridors in central India. Infrastructure is minimal, which is the point of going.

Best time: November–April.

BharhutHeritageSatna

The site of a Shunga-period Buddhist stupa of about the second century BCE, whose carved railing and gateway are among the earliest narrative stone sculpture in India — and are now in the Indian Museum in Kolkata, having been removed in the nineteenth century. The site itself is a low mound with almost nothing on it, which makes it a useful lesson in where regional heritage ends up.

Deur KotharHeritageRewa

A group of brick and stone stupas of the Mauryan period identified in the 1980s and now protected, on the old route between the Ganga plain and the Deccan. Almost unvisited, and evidence that the plateau was a through-route for Buddhism rather than a backwater.

ChandreheHeritageSidhi

A tenth-century Kalachuri Shiva temple and circular monastery on a bend of the Son, built for a Shaiva ascetic order. The circular math is architecturally unusual and the setting — river, rock and nothing else — is largely as it was.

Virateshwar Temple, SohagpurHeritageShahdol

A large Kalachuri-period stone temple of around the tenth or eleventh century, with a tall shikhara and dense exterior carving. It is the best-preserved early temple in the Son valley and is off almost every itinerary.

Chitrakoot (Satna side)PilgrimageSatna

Sphatik Shila, Hanuman Dhara, Gupt Godavari and Janki Kund lie on the Madhya Pradesh side of the pilgrimage town, while Kamadgiri and Ramghat lie across the boundary. Chitrakoot is administered from two states and sits astride the Bundelkhand–Bagelkhand cultural line as well.

Best time: October–March.

Rihand reservoir (Govind Ballabh Pant Sagar)NatureSingrauli, Sonbhadra

One of the largest artificial lakes in India by surface area, on the Rihand in the Son basin, built in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It anchors the coal-and-thermal-power complex that now defines the eastern end of the region, and its construction displaced a large population from the valley floor.