Jabalpur & Bhedaghat

Jabalpur sits on the Narmada in the middle of India, once capital of the Gond kingdom of Garha, whose queen Rani Durgavati died fighting Akbar's army in 1564; her Madan Mahal watchtower on a granite boulder and the Balancing Rock below it are the old town's markers. But the river is the point. Twenty-five kilometres away at Bhedaghat, the Narmada has cut a three-kilometre channel through marble, cliffs of white, grey and pink streaked with green, rising 30 metres on either side.

Boatmen row you into the gorge singing rhymed patter about the rocks, past Bandar Kudni where the walls come close enough for monkeys to leap across, and the water goes still and green. On full-moon nights the trip runs late and the marble glows. Just upstream, Dhuandhar Falls throws the whole river over a ledge in a wall of spray you hear long before you reach it; a cable car crosses above.

On the hill stands the Chausath Yogini temple, a circular Kalachuri shrine of the early 11th century whose colonnade holds 81 carved yoginis despite the name of sixty-four, with a later Shiva temple set in the open court; it is among the best preserved yogini temples in India. In town, the Rani Durgavati Museum's sculpture, the Dumna Nature Reserve and a khoya jalebi at Badkul's are enough. The Narmada Mahotsav in autumn brings dancers to the ghats, and the Sharad Purnima moonlight boating draws the biggest crowds of the year.