Jharkhand

Jharkhand means the land of forests, and the Chotanagpur plateau delivers on the name: sal, mahua and bamboo cover the uplands, and rivers step off the plateau edge in a string of waterfalls around Ranchi. Hundru drops about ninety-eight metres on the Subarnarekha, Jonha falls into a rock bowl below a Buddhist shrine, and Lodh in Latehar is the state's tallest at roughly one hundred and forty-three metres. Parasnath Hill, known to Jains as Shikharji, rises to about 1,350 metres and is revered as the place where twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras attained liberation; pilgrims climb through the night to reach the summit shrines by dawn. At Deoghar, Baidyanath Dham is one of the twelve jyotirlingas, and during Shravan a river of saffron-clad kanwariyas walks about a hundred kilometres from Sultanganj carrying Ganga water. Betla National Park in Palamau was among India's first tiger reserves; Netarhat is its cool weather retreat. Adivasi villages paint Sohrai and Khovar murals on mud walls after harvest. Signature journeys pair Ranchi's falls with Netarhat and Betla.