Travelling Madhyapradesh III: Pachmarhi

When I started writing about Madhaypradesh travel, I thought I would finish it in 3-4 consecutive posts but after the last post a strange [not to me though] lethargy possessed me. I am still possessed but trying with all my might to get out of it. Really, trust me, it needed lot of precious positive energy to come back to this blog!
So, we were in Saachi, right? As I said the road from Bhopal to Saachi is quite pleasant one. The taxi driver, on our way back stopped in the middle. I saw a tea stall on the left. When I looked at him,he showed me the right side of the road where there was a liquour store, type of a shanty to be precise. He said bottles are cheaper here and what is a sunday if one hasn't had a bottle! He offered me to buy few bottles of Rum. I politely declined since I was in no mood to carry bottles. Instead I offered him tea on the roadside joint and after he got his bottles, we had the tea together in that stall. In the morning, on the same day, Sujoy inquired about booking availability in Kanha and Bandhavgar and he got booking in Bandhavgar, one day in the government tourist lodge and the other day in some private resort. Resort? I wondered how far that would be from the Sanctuary but good news is that we have confirmed booking and that also without paying any advance.
So, here goes the plan for our next few days: From Bhopal we will take bus to reach Paachmari, the only hillstation in Madhyapradesh. We will spend few days in Paachmari and from there we will go to Bandhavgar. From Bandhavgar we will go to Jabalpur and start our return journey to Bangalore. We both were happy that we would cover so much of distance of MP with our almost non-existent planning. I told Sujoy, "Don't worry, everything works out for the sincere and courageous!" Thus, started our jouney in the heartland of MP.. we went to the City bus terminus in the early morning, The scheduled departure time is 6 AM. We reached at 5 AM [ we wanted good seats!] but learned that the ticket counter would not open till 6 AM. As we waited in the queue, 6 AM became 7 AM, however we were fed with regular updates on breaking news. Once we heard that Driver is not well because he drank too much last evening and that is the reason for delay. Then more inside information came: the driver started from the Depot 30 min. ago but nobody knows where he is now. Of course there were many variations but all were shared with a cheerful tone by folks; even the passengers, now waiting for more than 3 hours, are not at all angry, rather they are enjoying this lull time, utilizing the time to catch up on the missed spicy tidbits of their family and the City-life. Good people, I thought; they long back realized that time is merely an illusion!
The bus finally reached at 9:30 AM, the driver hurried up everyone, as if it is the passengers who were the folks to be blamed. But there were no mishaps in the long and winding terrain route to Paachmari, the bus finally reached there at the sunset. We hired a trekker to reach the MP tourist lodge that we booked. The lodge had a sprawling area with many trees and many small cottages, one of which we were given to stay.
Before we go further a little bit information of Paachmari would help. Paachmari or pachmarhi is a hill-station in the satpura range and has seen one of the oldest human inhabitation in the history of Indian subcontinent. There are caves that date back longer than formation of the Himalaya and in fact has paintings that are more than 10,000 years old. Today there is an army training camp [locally known as cantonment area] beside being one of the most popular tourist destination in this part of the world. MP tourism has a portal that provides tourism related details about this place, for those who want to visit and here goes the address: http://www.mptourism.com/dest/pachmarhi.html
Besides temples and falls, you have one must-visit place, called Pandava cave. It is told that Pandavas during their exile, stayed there for years, though it was not evident why Pandavas would take so much of hardship when there were so many other caves.
The lodge has a nice restaurant, [well if you do not have a car, this is the only choice you have] but more importantly the restaurant had a great service. As the night came upon, we experienced chilling cold [for the first time we felt cold during this entire visit]. The cottage did not have any heating device, all we had is a blanket for each person. I was waiting to get sleep, hoping that the body will adjust to the temperature. It was not a bad strategy however I needed to wait till the sunrise. In the morning, I discovered that Sujoy went under the mattress to beat the cold. His surviving skill appeared to be more advanced since he did sleep well!
Next night we asked for 3 blanket each.
In the morning we met our neighbour, a bengali couple with two daughters, the younger one is almost a toddler and we observed to our surprise that they actually carried quilt, pillow and blanket with themselves. Very enthusiastic guy, got friendly within no time and we agreed to do the 'sight-seeing' together. The elder girl was studying in eighth standard if I remember correctly. "She is a karate champion; last year she went on a championship tour to Australia", his father proudly announced. I asked her what she did in Australia and she dutifully went through all the details and I was pleased to see that she presented facts without any exaggeration.
I don't remember the name of the temple, but we had to walk in crouched position through a long tunnel before reaching a small cave where we saw a priest offering puja and I was told that this is the place Shiva hid when he was attacked by one of his Asura disciple. Fascinating stories and all of them narrate them as if they have seen them happening in front of them. the day's sightseeing ended with Pandav Cave which I talked about before. There were some engraving, inside those caves, which people claim, were done by Pandavas. I realized that Pandavas must have been prolific travellers since this place was at least 1500 kilometers from their so called birth place and they covered all these distance and many more [they went to Kailash and Tripura, remember?] on feet!
During dinner, our Bengali 'dada' told us his exotic travel stories. He told us how he picked the elusive Brahmakamal with the blessing and guidance of a mysterious Sadhuji. It is one of those once-in-a-lifetime-experience, he explained. Without divine intervention, it appeared that it is impossible to see this flower. It took another six years before I had the chance to have this experience of plucking this flower though I hardly can term it as anything divine.
Highlight of the next day was undoubtedly the cave paintings. These caves are almost unprotected and in an area that is covered inside dense jungle. The guide told us that many times bears or tigers are seen in these areas. These paintings are typically monochrome and has simple structure with many of them are kind of stick and head drawing. But these are sandstone and therefore subject to natural erosion. It is miracle that they survived for so many years. In very recent times, ASI has tried to put some boards, urging people not to touch these paintings but I was told that most of the damages are caused by the visiting foreigners who taking the advantage of non-existent security, have many times tried to chip away those paintings. It is misfortune that we, Indians do not treasure our own heritage and rather than creating awareness of this, we spend thousands of dollars to see stuff that are not even half as valuable as this. Any other country would have done remarkable things had they have found something like this in their countries.
Enough ranting! I added few photos that I took that time. It appeared to me that hunters stayed in these caves at different times and depending on the times, the complexity in painting increased.
With this let's conclude this post, will cover the Bandavgar and later experience in my next post, whenever that happens!