[rajeevmysore]

My interest primarily revolves around nature, wildlife and heritage temples and monuments. Had a perfect ending to 2024 having a 2 week trip of madhya pradesh.
Approx route:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/YmC5JpLgc4vG1Ess6

Day-0: Got down from train at morena railway station.
Stay at rest house,Eco Park Deori, Morena was booked (through https://mpforest.gov.in/ecotourism/e...stination.aspx.) We thought, being a forest dept eco center, it would be a safe and comfortable stay. However the experience of staying there was very unpleasant. We reached there around 10 pm. The problem starts - security at the gate would not let us in, telling his boss hasnt told him anything about the booking. There is no phone number on the booked receipt. No one picks the number mentioned in google maps and the security guard refuses to call his boss or share the number with us
Luckily, we had some contact with CCF and we told him we would need to speak to CCF if he did not allow us inside and we persuaded him to let us talk to his officer. The officer asked us for a soft copy and finally we were let in. The next stage: of the two rooms, one room had a broken cot ! Luckily the bed spreads were clean enough and we went for a good night's sleep. The next morning when we woke up - there is no power, so no geyser and no hot water
In future we shall avoid all such eco parks in MP at least after this experience. I wonder why forest dept rest houses cannot work with the efficiency of tourism dept hotels !

Day-1: Around gwalior:

Anyways, after freshening up, we went to the safari an chambal river, just below the bridge. The ticket issuing officer had still not arrived. He came at around 10:30 and off we went for a 2 hour boat ride. (per hour ride costs about Rs 1400 for a 6-seater). This was a worthy ride. Crocs - muggers and gharials, stilts, tortoise, cormorants, brahminy ducks, herons were sighted.
















We then proceeded to visit Kakanmath, built by the Kachchhapaghata ruler Kirttiraja. It is amazing to see the structure is still standing and looks like it might fall down anytime. However, our guide explained that it looks crude only because the outer cladding stones have fallen down and no more existing. The basic structure within a temple would be like this and they take students to study the architecture to know how to temples are built before they clad with icons etc.

The first look at the entrance:


A closer look:



A few sample claddings that would have covered the entire temple in its original form:



We then proceeded towards the mitaoli chaushat yogini temple.
At the entrance of the walkway, we find a monolithic bull that scholars date to kushan era. Was very happy to see a 2000 year old bull !



The actual temple is at top of the hill, which is a 10 min climb from here



Unfortunately the yogini statues themselves are missing from this temple, long smuggled (and maybe in some museums abroad)


The next stop was Padavali.
It was converted later to a fort and hence the entrance looks majestic


The actual temple is only a small part in the fort now.


But the mandapa is the most important one to see here: its ceilings are exquisitely carved.




The last stop was Batesvar group of temples. To give a context, the video of talk of its resurrection by Padmasri Mohammad is a valuable resource.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaNPeCzbSpM

The pathways are well laid


A group of more than 100 temples are present here, though it was a bit lonely. Except us, no one else were there at the site and no ticket counter too! . Toilets are indeed present though I did not venture to verify its hygiene.



A beautiful kalyana-sundara murti is still waiting to be placed back in its original place.



Just opposite of the entrance gate to this site is another temple, named after Nirbhay Singh Gurjar, a decoit of his times, on a very high platform.



This temple also has an exquisite ceiling.


That ended day 1 as we came down to gwalior and stayed at royal orchid hotel.
To be continued..

[BABABOT]

Originally Posted by rajeevmysore

My interest primarily revolves around nature, wildlife and heritage temples and monuments. Had a perfect ending to 2024 having a 2 week trip of madhya pradesh.

Thank you so much for starting this thread. I am planning a trip to Bandhavgarh Soon. Will be waiting for an update and first hand information from you.

[Simple_User]

Weird!, I was thinking about Madhya Pradesh a couple of days ago and how I do not know ANYTHING about the state, and Now I see these beautiful pics.

[rajeevmysore]

Day 2: Exploring Gwalior

The entire day was spent in exploring Gwalior and still I felt it felt short by at least half a day. There are some wonderful jain monuments which I missed.
we started off the day with HH Maharajah Sir Jiwajirao Scindia Museum.

The first view:



Scindia's identified themselves as Nagavamshi's clan and hence we see snakes in their state emblem.



The museum has a rich collection of archaeological artifacts,



carriages for the royalty,



carriages for their gods for procession,



ivory art,



a royal nursery in which the present Scindia's played as kids,



exquisitely carved rosewood/teakwood shelves,



a swimming pool



royal bathroom with a bathtub and a western toilet,



glass crystal fountain,



To top it all, there is a dining hall with three separate tables for veg, non-veg and alcoholic cuisines ! The alcoholic cuisine also has a train made of silver carrying them along with ice cubes and a mechanism to stop the train when someone is picking up something out of it. Though the train itself is not shown in movement, they have a video running how the whole thing works and is definitely a worth watch.



Place where they had meetings with British (Mountbatten I believe), the British Queen's cross symbol seen at the back wall



Also noteworthy is the durbar hall with grand and heavy chandeliers bought from Vienna weighing 3.5 Tonnes . Yes you heard it right!





This museum cum palace can easily take up 3-4 hours depending on your time and interest and in my opinion a worth visit in gwalior. We then proceeded towards gwalior fort.

[rajeevmysore]

Day 2: Noon - Gwalior Fort

Since this is a pretty large fort, one of our known acquaintance had guided us to enter via the Urwai gate, see the temples on this side and finally when we actually enter the fort through the ticketed entrance, get down via Gurjari Mahal gate. This was indeed a valuable suggestion as it avoids the climb from Gurjari mahal gate and hire an auto or something for the monuments at the Urwai gate.
As we entered the Urwai gate, we saw some jain monuments by the roadside. we first visited the sas-bahu mandir mainly named so due to twin temples, though the actual name is Sahsrabahu temple built for Vishnu.



The bigger Sas temple



The temple, having been destroyed during islamic invasions, was restored by the british and documented with an inscription on the entrance.



The doorjamb is finely carved with the trimuti images - Vishnu at the center and Brahma and Shiva at the two ends. The navagrahas can be seen in between.



There are other devakoshtas, but the deities themselves are missing. A Navagraha panel could be seen here too.



The smaller Bahu temple



What we see out in the open is actually the entrance to the garbhagruha inner sanctum, which is completely destroyed and lost forever.



A view of the Man Mandir palace from Bahu temple platform:



Our next stop was Teli Ka Mandir, a rare wagon vaulted roof temple we find in the north, technically called a Vallabhi shikara.



On a closer look, the door should have had opening till the Garuda we notice in the center of the door jamb in its original conception. Looks like for conservation and to protect it from the weight it has been carrying, a smaller entrance was built with bricks.



A closer look:



The door entrance has beautiful Ganga and Yamuna (on the other end), flanked by her attendents carrying an umbrella or a chattri as it is called.



A few jaina images scattered all over the fort is now placed within its premises.



There is also a Gurudwara at the fort to commemorate the imprisonment and further release of Sikh guru Guru Har Gobind Sahib in this fort. Legends say that the guru got 56 other kings also released along with him, but there is sufficient doubts from the historians as many of the 56 kings so named, lived before or later to the times of Har Gobind Sahib.

We now entered the palace. It has two museums, a smaller one maintained by ASI at the Urwai gate and the gurjari mahal itself converted to a museum at the other gate. ASI museum is good, but could be skipped if time is a constraint.



we also require to purchase two tickets for the palaces are separately maintained by central and state dept's.

The first monument that we encounter is the assi khamba bavdi. The pillars itself used for tying down prisoners with chain - this is where Har Gobind Sahib was also imprisoned it seems.



The main palace: Man Mandir





As we get down towards the Gurjari Mahal palace and museum, we see the beautiful chaturbhuj temple with the oldest inscription of numeral zero used in India and 2nd oldest anywhere in the world, the oldest being a temple in Sambor, Cambodia.



Finally we reach the Gurjari mahal.



Neatly classified halls for deities, inscriptions. Some artifacts are left open in the central courtyard.



Of interest here is a 3 storey underground chamber/well to fulfill the wish of the queen Mriganaynee who wanted to drink water from her village. At the 3rd floor below the ground, we see the remains of the terracota water pipe which incidentally bought water from her village miles away.



The next interesting image is of a salabhanjika - a woman resting on Sala tree. Though very similar in artistic beauty with plenty of ther salabhanjikas in this very museum, it won the first prize at an international exhibition in Europe. So this one salabhanjika is termed "Indian Mona Lisa" and caged within the museum





It was 5 pm and we had to exit the fort. Of interest that we missed was about five jain related monuments within the fort due to lack of time. The fort itself can consume a full day if one wants to see in detail.

We then went to witness the then ongoing Tansen music festival at his tomb.
An exhibition of various classical artists and the instruments that were used were displayed in a large tent. This was very well arranged. udos to MP tourism dept.





Tansen's guru Mohammad Ghaus's tomb



Tansen's modest tomb next to his guru as per his dying wish.



We ended the trip with a visit to Jhansi Rani Lakshmi Bai's samadhi sthal. It had closed for the day and we could just get a peek.





End of day 2