Things to do in Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh
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Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya
A kind of tribal safari park, only without the tribes, the open-air, hillside complex Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya is possibly your best chance to get a taste of India’s 450-plus tribes without actually visiting an Adivasi village. Authentic-looking dwellings – built and maintained by Adivasis using traditional tools and materials – dot the hillside. There’s a mythological trail and a more conventional museum on the hilltop.
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Taj-ul-Masjid
Bhopal’s third female ruler, Shah Jahan Begum wanted to create the largest mosque in the world, so in 1877 set about building Taj-ul-Masjid. It was still incomplete at her death in 1901, after funds had been diverted to other projects, and construction did not resume until 1971. Fortress-like terracotta walls surround three gleaming white onion domes and a pair of towering pink minarets with white domes. If you can make the dawn azan (Muslim call to prayer), you won’t regret it.
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Raja’s Café
The central location is great, as is the restaurant design, with a delightful wrought-iron spiral staircase linking a shaded courtyard with a temple-view terrace. But it’s the food that steals the show. The Indian dishes are superb – the paneer kofta (unfermented cheese and vegetable balls) and chicken kababi (barbecued chicken pieces marinated in yoghurt), in particular – and not too expensive, and there’s good-quality Italian and Chinese too.
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Laxman Temple
A possible day trip from Raipur, Sirpur is home to dozens of ruined Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries, all dotted around the village and surrounding countryside. Many of the excavations are works-in-progress. All are free to see apart from the star of the show, the 7th-century Laxman Temple, one of the oldest brick temples in India.
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Lakshmi Narayan Temple
Lakshmi Narayan Temple has a series of marble panels illustrating the central tenets of the Bhagavad Gita and views across the lakes to the minaret-dotted old city. An adjacent museum contains a small collection of local sculptures dating back to the 6th century. For those who don't make it to Bhimbetka, there's a reconstruction of one of the rock shelters.
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Van Vihar National Park
The best time to visit the 445-hectare safari park is at 16:30, when animals including two white tigers, an albino sloth bear and a lion pace the edges of their cages waiting to be fed. You may want to hire a rickshaw - it's 5km from the entrance to the basic interpretation centre at the end.
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Bharat Bhavan
This cultural centre is a serene place to take in modern Indian art, tribal carvings and paintings, a library and private contemporary art galleries. There is a cafe, and regular evening performances (7pm) of poetry, music and theatre.
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Jama Masjid Mosque
The gold spikes crowning the squat minarets of the Jama Masjid Mosque, built in 1837 by Qudsia Begum, glint serenely above the skull caps and veils swirling through the bazaar below.
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Rupayana
This bookshop has a friendly owner with an unusual selection of books on India.
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Bella Italia
A cheaper version of Mediterraneo, this rooftop restaurant overlooks Gole Market and sits beside a couple of huge trees which every day from around 6pm stage remarkable parrot-squawking contests.
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Bird house
Once you have the right file with the fonts loaded, open the first chapter of the book. Open Atlas and find the root destination associated with the book. For the Australia guide this will be 'Australia', for the Botswana & Namibia guide this will be 'Botswana' when working on destinations in Botswana, and 'Namibia' when working on Namibian destinations. Click on the destination name in Atlas to open the destination details page. This page includes all child places beneath this destination (on the right hand side under Children). There is a 'Create new place (as child of 'destination')' link under the 'Children' section. By clicking this link a new page will open where a …
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Khajuraho
The Kamasutra carvings that swathe Khajuraho's three groups of temples are among the finest temple art in the world. The temples are superb examples of Indo-Aryan architecture, but it's their liberally embellished carvings that have made Khajuraho famous. Around the temples are bands of exceedingly artistic stonework showing a storyboard of life a millennium ago - gods, goddesses, warriors, musicians, real and mythological animals.
The temples are described here in a clockwise direction. Varaha, dedicated to Vishnu's boar incarnation, and the closed-up Lakshmi are two small shrines facing the large Lakshmana Temple. Inside Varaha is a 1.5m-high sandstone boar, dating to …
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Man Singh Palace
Whimsical is the only way to describe Man Singh Palace : an imperial palace decorated with a frieze of yellow ducks! These - and mosaic tiling of elephants, tigers and crocodiles in blue, yellow and green - give it its alternative identity of Chit Mandir, or Painted Palace.
Built by Tomar ruler Man Singh between 1486 and 1516, this fine example of early Hindu architecture consists of two open courts surrounded by apartments on two levels. Below ground lie another two storeys constructed for hot weather, connected by 'speaking tubes' built into the walls and used by the Mughals as prison cells.
Here Aurangzeb imprisoned his brother, Murad, and slowly poisoned him with opium…
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Jai Vilas Palace
The Scindia Museum occupies some 35 rooms of the Scindias' opulent Jai Vilas Palace , built by Maharaja Jayajirao in 1874 using prisoners from the fort. The convicts were rewarded with the 12-year job of weaving the hall carpet, the largest in Asia.
The gold paint around the durbar (royal court) hall weighs half a tonne. Eight elephants were suspended from its ceiling to check it could cope with two 12.5m-high, 250-lightbulb, 3.5-tonne chandeliers, said to be the largest pair in the world.
Bizarre items fill the rooms: Belgian cut-glass furniture and stuffed tigers. There's a ladies-only swimming pool with diving boards, a boat and a wine cabinet. The cavernous dining room…
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Urvai Gate Rock Sculptures
While there are sculptures carved into the rock on the way up from Gwalior Gate, the most impressive are those on the long ascent up from Urvai Gate. The Urvai Gate Rock Sculptures are mostly cut into the cliff face in the mid-15th century, they represent nude figures of tirthankars (the 24 great Jain teachers), defaced and castrated by Babur's Muslim army in 1527 but more recently repaired.
The images are numbered in white lettering at the base. Image No 20 is a 17m-high standing sculpture of the first tirthankar, Adinath, while image No 22 is a 10m-high seated figure of Nemnath, the 22nd tirthankar.
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Rowboat
Marble Rocks (known locally as Bhedaghat) is a Gorge on the Narmada River. The trip up the 2km-long gorge is made in a shared rowboat from the jetty at Panchvati Ghat. Alternatively hire a boat (standard/large Rs. 200/Rs. 320) to yourself. There’s good swimming at the ghat too, but currents can be strong; take your lead from the locals. For a nice post-boating stroll, and a closer look at village life, carry on up the hill past the ghat entrance and turn right just before Motel Marble Rocks, where you’ll find a tiny path leading past local homes and down towards the gorge.
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Southern Gateway
The back-to-back lions supporting the oldest gateway form the state emblem of India and can be seen on every banknote; they're an excellent example of the Greco-Buddhist art of that era. The gateway narrates Ashoka's life as a Buddhist, with scenes of Buddha's birth and another representation of the Great Departure. Also featured is the Chhaddanta Jataka, in which Buddha took the form of a six-tusked elephant. One of his two wives became jealous and had the elephant hunted and killed. The sight of his tusks, sawn off by the hunter, was sufficient for the queen to die of remorse.
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Raneh Falls
These 30m-high waterfalls, 18km from Khajuraho, tumble as a churning mass over black and red rocks. The ticket office is 2km before the falls so if you don’t want to pay the high fees for vehicle entry be prepared for a bit of a walk. When you get to the falls there are boats for hire (from Rs. 50) and it’s possible to view gharials – a critically endangered species of crocodile – at nearby Ken Gharial Sanctuary. The road is signposted if you fancy cycling from Khajuraho, or else its Rs. 300/400 return in an autorickshaw/taxi.
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Sasbahu Temples
The Mayan-like Sasbahu Temples , or Mother-in-Law and Daughter-in-Law temples, rise close to the eastern wall. They are similar in style and date from the 9th to 11th centuries. Mother-in-Law is dedicated to Vishnu, with an ornately carved base and figures of the deity over the entrances; four gigantic pillars support the heavy roof, layered with carvings. The smaller Daughter-in-Law, dedicated to Shiva, is also stacked with sculptures.
Once damaged by Aurangzeb's roaming band of image defacers, vandalism is fortunately restricted to the lower levels.
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Northern Gateway
Topped by a broken wheel of law, this is the best preserved of the toranas. Scenes include a monkey offering a bowl of honey to Buddha, represented by a bo tree. Another panel depicts the Miracle of Sravasti - one of several miracles represented here - in which Buddha, again in the form of a bo tree, ascends a road into the air. Elephants support the architraves above the columns, while horses with riders and more elephants squeeze in between.
Delicately carved yakshis (maidens) hang nonchalantly on each side.
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Toranas
Four gateways were erected around 35 BC and had all completely fallen down at the time of the stupa's restoration. Scenes carved onto the pillars and their triple architraves are mainly tales from the Jatakas, episodes from Buddha's various lives. At this stage in Buddhist art he was never represented directly - his presence was alluded to through symbols. The lotus stands for his birth, the bodhi tree his enlightenment, the wheel his teachings, and the footprint and throne his presence. The stupa itself also symbolises Buddha.
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Teli ka Mandir
Used as a soda factory and coffee shop by the British after the Indian Uprising, this 30m-high, 8th-century temple is the oldest monument in the compound. The hybrid design of Teli ka Mandir incorporates a Dravidian square roof and Indo-Aryan decorations. Dedicated to Vishnu, the Pratihara temple is covered with sculptures and a Garuda tops its 5m-high doorway.
The modern gold-topped gurdwara (Sikh temple) nearby is dedicated to Sikh hero Guru Har Gobind, who Nur Jahan imprisoned in Man Singh Palace.
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Eastern Gateway
The breathtakingly carved figure of a yakshi, hanging from an architrave, is one of Sanchi's best-known images. One of the pillars, supported by elephants, features scenes from Buddha's entry to nirvana. Another shows Buddha's mother Maya's dream of an elephant standing on the moon, which she had when he was conceived. Across the front of the middle architrave is the Great Departure, when Buddha (a riderless horse) renounced the sensual life and set out to find enlightenment.
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Vedh Shala (Observatory)
Ujjain has been India’s Greenwich since the 4th century BC and this simple but interesting observatory was built by Maharaja Jai Singh in about 1730. He also built observatories in Jaipur, Delhi, Varanasi and Mathura, but Ujjain’s is the only one still in use. Among the instruments in the small garden are two marble-topped sun dials; one a conventional sun dial, the other made up of two large quadrants split by a tall staircase whose shadow tells the time.
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Lal Bagh Palace
Built between 1886 and 1921, Lal Bagh Palace is the finest building left by the Holkar dynasty. Replicas of the Buckingham Palace gates creak at the entrance to the 28-hectare garden, where there is a statue of Queen Victoria. The palace is dominated by European styles, with baroque and rococo dining rooms, an English library with leather armchairs, a Renaissance sitting room with ripped sofas and a Palladian queen’s bedroom.
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