Mandla Trip - I

Since a very long time I was thinking of going for a car trip to Kanha Tiger Reserve (KTR). Since our sis now works there, it's a good opportunity to visit and make use of insider benefits :)
Plan was to utilize the super-long weekend of Oct 2nd to 6th 2014, with a few extra days vacation. Initially our cousin, Susheel, from Western Ghats Trip was to join. However, he couldn't, so we asked around and another cousin, Revanth, was enthusiastic enough to come along. If it were only me and our mom, it wouldn't have been worthwhile by just two people going in car for such long distance.

This was the route we planned.

2 October
We woke up by 3 am, and began early at 4:30 am from home. I was planning to leave even more early (3.30 am), but the usual last minute packing delayed our start. We found later in the day that the delay didn't matter much.
Odometer reading was 19641.
Since we started very early, we comfortably avoided all city traffic. The road was very good until we reached Telangana-Maharashtra border.

However, the road after Adilabad, for about 50 KM was terrible - full of potholes. Looked like it was a road under development by NHAI.
We stopped near Seoni (pronounced as 'sew-knee') around 1 pm for lunch, under a tree, like a picnic.
Since we relied on google Maps, it took a shortcut to Mandla, reducing the distance by about 10 km. However, it wasn't even a proper road, and was terrible. We not only wasted about half an hour due to this route, but also the drive experience so far had given us chills for the return route!
Despite the delays, we reached by around 4.30 pm.
Then had chicken biryani for dinner, prepared by our sis! And slept early since we were tired, and also had to start early the next day for another long drive to Amarkantak.
Odo was 20407.

3 October
We started early, by about 6 am, to go to Amarkantak. It was about 200 km one way.

This was the route for the day. We had to visit all places in Amarkantak and return by evening. Usually people stay there overnight and return the next day. But we're overachievers ;-)

Since we started early, we watched the sunrise while on our way there.

Although there's a lot of greenery and the cattle is almost always grazing, they're very skinny. I wonder how they manage that!

And, of course, no road in India at this time of the day is devoid of natural speed breakers!

There's cattle everywhere - on roads, hilltops, etc.

The scenery was beautiful throughout.

Not the regular monkeys, these are Lion tailed macaques. They weren't aggressive. Just were scared by our car passing by.
We had breakfast at Dindori and filled fuel in the car too. The road was just cut though a forest, no facilities anywhere. Dindori was the only major town with a fuel station between Mandla and Amarkantak.

We first went to the most popular place of Amarkantak. The reason why almost everyone comes here. The birthplace of Narmada river. People were drinking the water, dropping currency into it as offering, etc. However, I couldn't understand where the water was going - there seemed to be no outlet. And the water being green suggested it probably wasn't flowing. I felt the color was probably due to people washing their hands and legs in the water.
A huge temple complex has been constructed around this waterhole.

The water hole can be seen towards left of the picture. This was the queue for entering the main temple, of goddess Narmada (river is the goddess). The crowd was because a minister was visiting and the day was dussera.

Although the queue length reduced after a while it still seemed quite long to me, so I skipped going in.

An elephant, in front of the inner main temple. This was hiding behind the queue in one of the above picture. If you look carefully at the elephant's underbelly, you may notice that the stone underneath is very smooth and grounded. That's because devotees squeeze themselves through the underbelly, and are cheered by everyone around when someone is performing the feat. I wonder how many thousands, or even millions, of people squeezed themselves through that hole. It seems if devotees squeeze through the hole, their sins are washed away.

Other side of the temple pond.

Among them is a very old temple built with stone.

These are just about half of the small temples inside the temple complex.

A small distance away from the main temples were some very old temples, maintained by ASI.

It was very well maintained.

More about its history, written on stone.

Our own leaning temple of Amarkantak ;-)

This shows that some of the temples have tilted.

The temple architecture reminded us of Pattadakal.

Another old temple complex, closed for visitors.

Lotus in a nearby pond.

This calf followed us on our way back from the temples to our car, probably thinking we'll provide it some food. But it was unlucky, we didn't have anything to give.

A couple of kilometers away was the Shakti peetham.

 

Peacocks on the concentric wall inside the temple.

Going further inside, is the main temple of goddess Shakti, at the center.

However, its entrance is on the other side of main entrance.

Although it doesn't appear as big from outside, it seems huge from inside the temple.

Next up was Son river's birthplace (Son here is pronounced as 'Sone', rhymes with 'bone'; all direction boards write it as "Son"). This river is a tributary of Narmada. When we reached the parking, we were a bit taken aback by the monkeys. There were a lot of them, some sitting on cars and waiting!

Going down a few steps, we got to the place where it originates.

The water looked clean, people were drinking, and filling their water bottles!

This is the waterfall of Son river, within five minutes walking distance from its origination.

View from top of the waterfall.

Trees along the waterfall's cliff don't have much vertical space to grow.

There were a lot of monkeys near the parking.

A few kilometers away is the origin of Juhila river. However, this place is more popularly known as Jwaleshwar temple. Most people didn't understand when we asked for directions to the Juhila river's origin. But they instantly understood when we asked for Jwaleshwar temple.

It seems the river starts from inside the Jwaleshwar temple (Lord Shiva) and the water flows into this well. The water was blue! People were drinking the water. And some were bathing with the water beside the well itself. Inside the well, we could see some big fishes (about half-a-meter long) swimming in the water.

Pine trees don't really belong here, but we saw a few. We had lunch at the MP Tourism Hotel, and saw these trees near the hotel.
Some explanation by our sis: Pines are not present here, they are exotic species as they do not grow in MP, they were planted by British and are still maintained till date. The only place in central India (and, of course, 1 more place is Supkhar range in KTR). There was a huge pine plantation on the way to Kapil dhara.

A few kilometers away, waterfalls at Kapil dhara. The yellow patches are flowers from upstream, dropped into the river by devotees worshiping the river.

View of the valley from top of the waterfall. Notice some people trekking down to take bath under shower of the waterfall.

Spotted more monkeys. They were ubiquitous.

Back at Amarkantak entrance is the Kabir sarovar.

Most of the road from Dindori to Amarkantak was beautifully covered by Sal trees from both sides. The road was really awesome. No potholes at all. Very little traffic. Amazing scenery.

Some places, there was no cover, and yet it looked awesome!
If you look carefully, someone's sitting on the road. It seems that means it's a bus stop! Any bus passing by will stop for him.

We stopped at one of the bridges to freshen up with the river water. This was a small unknown river/stream that we couldn't figure out from our maps. but it didn't matter, it was rejuvenating.

View of the water from bottom of the bridge.

View of the bridge, from surface of the water.

People setting up Ravanasur on the occasion of dussera.
We had fish for dinner after returning to Mandla.

Part 2 continued here - Mandla Trip - II