Stupas, caves and forts: A trip down Bhopal for a sense of our collective past

Just 45km from Bhopal, Bhimbetka is a World Heritage site - a 10,000-year-old open-air gallery of Paleolithic art. (Photo courtesy Sundeep Khanna)

If a short one-hour flight from Delhi or a slightly longer ride on the Shatabdi or even a languid drive of just over a day is what revs up your mojo, a happy surprise destination for an urban, yet atavistic, journey into your very own past would be Bhopal.

Yes, the forever tragically-hyphenated city could be an exciting centre point for fabulous forays into prehistory, petroglyphs and peacefulness. Far removed from Altamira in Spain or Lascaux in France, both lodestones of early rock art, Bhopal holds in nearby Bhimbetka, a World Heritage site, an 10,000-years-old open-air gallery of Paleolithic art, giving us a glimpse into the vivid world of early man.

Bhopal, being close to the Tropic of Cancer, is placed happily in the geographical centre for most cities in India and has numerous trains that pass through it, with 13 of them just from Delhi. Once there, you can access many budget as well as five-star hotels, plus heritage palaces of the erstwhile nawabs for a great stay.

As you drive through the city, visually you are greeted by patches of lush greenness, large lakes and the undulations of the Shamla Hills. The lack of traffic immediately plummets your blood pressure into the low 80s as you plan your getaways to nearby  Bhimbetka, Sanchi and Bhojpur, anticipating the unbroken lineage of human history you find here.

Bhimbetka, just 45 km and an easy taxi-ride away from Bhopal, is mired in antiquity with imposing quartzite caves, harbouring Precambrian millennia-old fossils of basal animal Dickinsonia. However, the unbroken quiet of the Ratapani forest that beckons you with tender leaves waving and one mad bird cry that slits the air doesn’t prepare you for the oneness you are going to find both within your heart and in the strangely drawn shadowy figures of your ancestors.

Bhimbetka, the mount where Bhim used to sit when in exile, was part of a 10,000-year-old stone age site where early man shielded himself from the elements and drew animals and hunting scenes, as if to keep record of his daily travails. Some of the later Bronze Age drawings show horseback riders, all drawn in mineral colours like hematite and white limestone mixed with animal fat. This first act of picking up a twig stylus led to the initiation of the journey of human imagination that is still frenzied, setting our species apart from every other taxa in the animal kingdom.

As you slide down the time scale you reach Sanchi, the town synonymous with the 3rd century Mauryan Buddhist stupas, hemispherical structures typically containing the relics of the Buddha. Newly converted emperor Ashoka constructed these imposing sacred architectural wonders to spread Buddhism. Embellished architraves with exquisite  sculptural detailing are full of lions, elephants, lotuses and tell of the life of the Buddha. The Ashokan capital pillar with four lions has made it as the national emblem.

Just some distance away is Bhojeshwar  temple on the banks of the Netravati in Raisen district. Known as the Somnath of the east, it is dedicated to Shiva. This gigantic never-completed temple built by the 11th century Paramara king Bhoj has a shivlinga which is the largest stone structure carved out of a single rock anywhere in the world. To pour water over the linga, there is an iron staircase for access by pilgrims. While the structure is imposing, the surrounding area is in a dilapidated state, which shows a fine disdain by Indian tourists /pilgrims.

At Bhojpur's Shiva temple (Photo: Bernard Gagnon via Wikimedia Commons)

A tranquil detour is the Raisen fort that played an important role in the history of the Malwa kingdom due to its strategic position, as it lies on the ancient route passing through Vidisha where the great king Ashoka, ‘beloved of the Gods’, fell in love with a local girl. Raisen fort, probably from the corruption of Rajaswini or Rajasayan, the royal residence, was inhabited during prehistoric times: it has caves with rock paintings.

Another mandir, the enormous Bijamandal, is close to Vidisha. This quiet ruin is famous because it is a sprawling site from the 11th century and not visited by too many tourists. Another surprise are the forts at Islamnagar, once the capital and now a sleepy place, but boasting the Rani Mahal and the Chaman Mahal with a water garden. A quick visit to the 20 Udayagiri caves with their 4th century AD Gupta age sculptures, especially of the Varaha, or Vishnu in the boar avatar, will round off the trip.

Vijay Tiwari09 via Wikimedia Commons)" width="512" height="768" /> Chaman Mahal (Photo: Vijay Tiwari09 via Wikimedia Commons)

If you want a bit of adventure, you can race on a speed boat along the waters of the Udayagiri dam. Or take the paddle boat and wade along, something you can also do in the vast lakes in Bhopal.

But the piece de resistance is in Bhopal city itself in the form of the tribal museum, an ethnographer's delight with six galleries of installations, ritual artefacts and recreations of daub and wattle huts. You can see here the exuberant rapture of Bronze Age man delighting in his new-found metallic play. The simple shamanistic barter with anthropomorphic spirit deities and the rather complex philosophies to make sense of death and the timeless, leave one with a sense of awe. The bronze giant bangle or the stairway to heaven weaving a world beyond the world has a metaverse feeling even in so primitive a worldview.

The gatla, the Bhil tribe’s stone plaques for people who died unnatural deaths, white for males and black for females, at the edge of the dwellings are part of their funerary customs. Carved plaques were replaced by stones with etchings of  the sun and moon for females and bows and arrows and swords for males. You will also come upon offerings of heaps of broken limbs carved out from wood for the Bhil goddess who cures broken bones.

The Museum of Man next door on a 40-hectare area, has houses of man in different habitats in a memorable display offering a rare glimpse into our dwellings.

With such treasures providing a rare look into our collective heritage, requiring not too big a budget, Bhopal truly is a great destination to get to peek inside of oneself and discover kinship with the past.