Chhattisgarh

Chhattisgarh sits on the old Dandakaranya plateau, a landscape of sal and teak forest, laterite plateaus and rivers that turn violent in July. Its signature sight is Chitrakote Falls near Jagdalpur, where the Indravati spreads across a horseshoe rim nearly three hundred metres wide in full monsoon and drops about thirty metres into a red gorge. Nearby, Kanger Valley National Park hides the limestone chambers of Kutumsar and the tiered curtain of Tirathgarh Falls. Bastar district is the cultural core: Gond, Muria, Maria and Dhurwa communities meet at weekly haats to trade mahua, salfi sap and iron tools, and the Bastar Dussehra centred on the goddess Danteshwari runs for about seventy-five days, longer than any other festival in India. History surfaces at Sirpur, where the seventh-century brick Laxman Temple survives, and at the eleventh-century Bhoramdeo Temple near Kawardha with its erotic and celestial friezes. Tigers move through Indravati and Achanakmar. Signature journeys pair a Bastar craft and haat circuit with Chitrakote in September and a night in Mainpat's Tibetan settlement.