Madhya Pradesh, India — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Madhya Pradesh known for?

Madhya Pradesh holds more tiger reserves than any other Indian state, and Kanha and Bandhavgarh draw travellers deep into the sal forests for a sight of them. The carved temples of Khajuraho and the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi both carry UNESCO World Heritage listing, and the hilltop fort at Gwalior guards the northern approach to the state. Bhopal, the capital, spreads around its lakes, while Indore anchors the commercial west.

Where is Madhya Pradesh?

Madhya Pradesh occupies the centre of India, a landlocked state with no coast of its own. Its name means "central province". The Narmada is the spine of the place, rising on the Amarkantak plateau in the east and running west across the whole state before it reaches the Arabian Sea far beyond the border in Gujarat.

Two ranges hem that river in. The Vindhya hills rise to the north of the Narmada and the Satpura hills to the south, and the valley between them cuts the state into an upper and a lower half. South of the Satpura the land drains instead into the Tapti.

The Vindhya have long been read as the divide between northern and southern India, and Madhya Pradesh straddles that line. Bhopal stands roughly at the centre, on the northern plateau. The forested, higher country lies east and south, toward the borders with Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, where the tiger reserves sit.

Open farmland fills the Malwa plateau in the west around Indore. Rajasthan lies to the north-west and Uttar Pradesh to the north-east. It is a wide interior state on high plateau ground, closer in feel to the tableland than to any sea.

What is Madhya Pradesh like?

Hindi is the common language across Madhya Pradesh, written in the Devanagari script and shared with the wider Hindi belt of northern India. The state carries a long religious layer. Ujjain is one of Hinduism's holiest cities and hosts the Kumbh Mela on the Kshipra river, while Sanchi keeps some of the oldest surviving Buddhist stone in the country.

That range of faith is the heart of the culture here. The stone itself tells much of the story. Chandela kings raised the Khajuraho temples with their famous carved figures, the Bundela rulers built the palaces of Orchha, and the sultans of Malwa left the hillside pavilions of Mandu.

Gwalior fort towers over the north on its long sandstone ridge. Craft traditions run alongside the monuments, from the Maheshwari and Chanderi weaves to the tribal Gond painting of the eastern districts. Large Adivasi communities live across much of eastern Madhya Pradesh, and their forest villages give the state a character quite apart from the cities.

Food leans to wheat and gram, plainer than the coasts. The whole makes a distinctly central-Indian identity, neither of the north nor of the Deccan.

What is the history of Madhya Pradesh?

The land is ancient. Ujjain was a seat of the Mauryan and Gupta empires, and Ashoka governed the region before he raised the great stupa at Sanchi in the third century BCE. Later the Chandela, the Malwa sultans, and the Maratha houses of Scindia at Gwalior and Holkar at Indore all held parts of this ground.

The state itself is young. Modern Madhya Pradesh was drawn together only in 1956, when the States Reorganisation Act merged several princely territories and provinces into one Hindi-speaking state, with Bhopal as its capital rather than Jabalpur.

What is the climate of Madhya Pradesh?

Madhya Pradesh runs to three sharp seasons. Summers before the rains are fierce, with May and June pushing well past the mid-forties across the northern and western districts. Then the south-west monsoon breaks in mid-June and carries the bulk of the year's rain through September, heaviest in the south-east near Amarkantak and thinning toward the drier Malwa plateau in the west.

Winters turn cool and dry. Pachmarhi, the one hill station high in the Satpura, stays milder than the plains through the hot months.

How do you get to Madhya Pradesh?

For most, Madhya Pradesh begins at an airport. Indore carries the state's busiest airport, with Bhopal a short way east of it, and both cities sit on the trunk rail lines that cross central India between Delhi and Mumbai. Smaller airports at Gwalior, Jabalpur, and Khajuraho put the northern forts and the eastern tiger parks within reach.

For the reserves you land at one of these, then drive the last stretch by road to the park gates.