In the process of exploration, we had already covers ten and more destinations in 2014. However in the continuation of our exploration, we planned to explore unseen and less explored beauty of India so we decided to visit Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, and Pachmarhi, a hill Station in Satpura mountain Range.
We reached Bhopal in the morning. The biggest task, after reaching Bhopal, was to find a decent hotel to rest a little. Auto drivers offered us the rides within 20 rupees to some good family hotels. But being a shrewd 😉 person, I declined all the offers and after struggling for half an hour we got an decent hotel in cheap rate.
At 10 AM, we checked out the hotel as we planned to cover Bhopal within 4 hours and head to Pachmarhi post lunch. So we started our trip with Laxmi Narayan Temple i.e. Birla Mandir. The temple is new and it’s just like any other Hindu temple, but it offers a panoramic view of Bhopal overlooking both lakes and several monuments within the city. As it was the most famous temple, and it didn’t offer much, so we excluded remaining temples from our itinerary.
We moved to Birla museum which is adjacent to the temple. The museum exhibits demolished yet beautiful idols, ancient art object, artillery, and other objects showcasing the life style of ancient Madhya Pradesh. These artifacts were found during the excavation of various sites across the state. There were innumerable items; so we rushed through them after examining a few with complete intent. Oh! I do not have any photographs from the gallery, as the guard did not allow the pictures of the artifacts.
Our auto driver left us near Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya – National Museum of Mankind which is situated next to Bari Lake. We wanted to complete the museum within an hour, but it took us more than 4 hours to visit even half the musuem. This museum can be divided in two major areas i.e. outbound and inbound. Outbound area is spread across various hectors to demonstrate the life style, home, culture of various tribes, people, and states, whereas inbound area exhibits the human evolution, living style of various tribes of India.
We ignored few of the places on the way. Our first major halt was at Fisherman village. It was depicting the living style of fishermen across country. In the similar fashion, living styles of various others states and tribe were conceptulized on the way to internal museum. We were really exhausted by the time we reached to the inbound museum.
Inbound museum has 13 galleries in it. Each gallery is rich with thousands of artifacts about the style, living, fashion, ornaments, rituals, weapons, and etc. It became way too difficult to keep track of each and every artifact. Information received today was way too more than a rational mind could hold. Now every new area or gallery was becoming too much to grasp. So we skipped a few galleries to save energy.
The only restaurant, approved by central government, was another 500 meters away from the inbound museum. To add to our irony, meal was not available for next one hour. Anyway we flattered the owner and sneaked out two plates after waiting for 30 minutes. We had already missed our deadlines, but we were still positive about leaving Bhopal.
Van Vihar is a zoo situated next to the lake. Animals are not sheltered into cages but they have been provided enough space to survive. We hired bicycle, provided by MP tourism, to stroll through Van Vihar. It took us around 3 hours to cover the complete zoo on bicycles. It was the ride of approximately 12 km in the zoo. We were ecstatic with the use of bicycle after so many years in such a beautiful environment.
Now we were sure that it was not possible to leave Bhopal today, so we relaxed at the lake for a while. Gathering, in the evening, near the lake was very similar to a fair in a town. People of various ages were swarming it. Couples were sitting under a tree shade and were engulfed with each other without the knowledge of people around. Elderly folks were walking briskly to keep their body and soul intact. Ladies were all around eatery stalls, and boating facilities. Due to a little emergency, we had to leave the place little earlier than planned, but it all was fun to become a spectator of such a lively environment.
We returned to our hotel in the night to plan the next day or to head to Pachmarhi.
Lazy Yatra - Experiences 