The Hills Come Alive with Ancient Songs

We still had two hours of daylight left when we left Chindwara  on our way to Panchmarhi – both in Madhya Pradesh.  It had been raining since the morning and its occasional ferocity threatened to wash out the Handloom Exhibition which had been sponsored by our organisation and  enthusiastically set up by the weavers from the nearby regions.  Our bullet point agenda  had already delayed us and we were wondering if it would still be possible to visit Patalkot, a tribal village, which entailed a  17 kms detour from the main road. The drive to Tamia, a picturesque town on the way, was like stepping back in time to a land infused with poetic images and an era, which could well have fitted into a passage in  history. Vast fields covered in verdure stretched into the horizon, its edges fringed by the rays from a watery sun.  Hutments bandaged in tarpaulin and guarded by herds of buffaloes dotted the land - no factories, no malls, no cafes in sight - the only modern feature for miles was the road hugging the fields and the occasional car zipping by. In Patalkot, a tribal village, which literally translates into a habitat in the bowels of the earth, we stopped in a clearing where a viewing tower invited tourists to gape at the tribal village miles below, cocooned by the surrounding hills guarding it.

We now went onwards to Panchmarhi, still a couple of hours drive away.  The sun had set and soon  enough darkness stretched its long fingers over  the hills, very quickly spreading  like an impermeable blanket – black and mysterious, guarding the  stories told over millennia and inscribed somewhere in its craggy crevices. The rain came more gently now, and every once in a while the fog rolled in almost whimsically enveloping the car at unexpected turns, its headlights shining valiantly  on the black asphalt  glistening like a somnambulant serpent. Lights flashed, catching signages thoughtfully providing  warnings and directions –and we could only be thankful that the road was so good and carefully designed, the way approach roads in the mountains should be.

And then there was Panchmarhi opening before us, the air newly washed, crisp and cold at that altitude of 1100 metres. Still pristine and unspoilt, spared of the  gargantuan  greed for construction eating other hill stations and its hugely expanding populaces, it breathed an ease  with its history,  its mythology and now its contemporary label of tourist and trekkers getaway. The town was found again by Forsyth the English soldier in 1857 but long before that humans had  been in those regions during  the Paleolithic, and Mesolithic  eras; the Pandavas ( according to popular lore) and  Buddhists too had found sanctuary in its dense jungles and caves.

Where to begin and what was one to choose from amongst the many attractions  on offer,  was a very real quandary facing us the next morning, just as it did for the French couple, a little further away, thumbing furiously through their  Lonely Planet, as they ate  their breakfast in the hotel’s lawns. The tweets and chirps of visiting birds and the  chatter of inquisitive monkeys, with the mali energetically trying to keep the mammals away,  added to one’s sense of being transported to the idyllic.

Finally, decision made, we began with a visit to the Pandava caves, its   five caves considered  the inspiration behind the town’s name.    Though legend has it that these were discovered by the Pandavas during their years of exile,  the sign there  contradictorily states that they were more likely  carved during Buddhist times. Strongly reminiscent of  the Udayagiri caves in the Vidisha region close to Bhopal, though not quite  as  ornate or as beautifully sculpted, their humbler interiors are protected by equally ugly eye sores – metal doors with poky grill work, which thwart every possibility of gaining a good view or a camera angle.   Bureaucratic  enthusiasm or  indifference for visiting tourists, who could tell what had prompted that ugliness, but enhance the place it  most certainly did not. From there to Bison Lodge the oldest building in the town, built by Forsyth who our guide informed, had  killed a bison there and so its name, ironically commemorating our insatiable blood lust.  After visits to some of the other sights such as Reechgarh, a distorted version of its original name Ridge garh, an amazing erosion of  a rock face,  we drove into the Satpura Forest reserve area,  canopied in the dense foliage of Sal and teak trees and  an amazing variety of cacti,  herbal and medicinal plants as our guide of tribal origin who breathes of the forest’s secret, informed us and showed some of the species. We drove deeper into the reserve area, which in this part is called the Panchmarhi biosphere. It’s spread approximately over 500 sq kms, and in its wider expanse touches the famous Kanha and Bandhavgarh forests. We then came  to Dhoopgarh, a poetic name for one of the highest  points in the hills, which greedily hogs  the sun’s munificent rays over the longest stretch of time during the day.  We had come to partake of its offering  - its spectacular sunsets against the backdrop of the  Satpura hills.

The sun was suspended low over the hills when we arrived there, the rock face bathed in its golden slant,  a portend to the pyrotechnics that were soon to be unleashed over the ravines and hills stretching endlessly, beyond one’s visual range.   We moved towards the viewing area, designed like an amphitheater to accommodate the huge crowds that fill its confines during ‘season time’; fortunately it was not that. And so a motley group of travel enthusiasts had straggled  in there and  now whiled their time, munching on pakoras and sipping piping hot tea served by a vendor  as they waited impatiently. A stiff breeze blew across the viewing station, while in the distant, the  sun played out its theatrics:  it changed into a deeper orange and slipped lower in the sky hanging tantalisingly for long minutes over the hills now shrouded in a bluish haze; the sky turned many shades of pink and purple; the trees washed in ink and as the birds squawked their last plaintive cries as if closing  the curtains on the day, the sun disappeared from view.  It was over  within seconds,  almost anti climatic in its build up  and  the brevity of the unfolding dramatics.  The crowds moved away, some restlessly, others as if gripped by a sense of  déjà vu, unwittingly ushered into the realms of mortality signaled by the dying day.  Car ignitions were switched on, and impatient horns shredded  the quiet for a  short while, as they drove back into the trappings of civilization, leaving the jungle to wrap around itself  its silences and  its secrets, as it had done every night through millennia.