Madhya Pradesh is literally littered with historic memorabilia, the grand and beautiful examples of which grace the top of plateaus, the depths of valley, banks of rivers and walls of caves. The architecture of monuments here, which are mostly not more than a millennium old varies a bit, but is mostly very predictable. Of course, there are a few places, which surprise, but the more we explore, the better we know where our foot is going to land next.

Chanderi was chosen as a destination of our monsoon ride, because the road to it is awesome, the monuments there are very varied, there are rivers and dams in vicinity and the numerous plateaus decorate the landscape well. Plus it has that typical small MP town feel. Peaceful aura, reasonable roads, simple food and history.

We started from Gwalior at around 6am and reached Chanderi with some halts at 11am. We had already books rooms the the MP tourism hotel, Tana Bana, so got there and settled. The hotel is reasonably good. The rooms are nice, the food is ok and the view from the terrace is of a dam reservoir.

After resting for an hour, we started off to visit the monuments. As it was raining, fluctuating in intensity from a drizzle to pour downs, we knew we would have issues with finding the places and photographing. However, we did manage to cover most of the stuff. Here is the list :

  1. Chanderi Fort
  2. Khooni Darwaza
  3. Jageshwari Devi Temple
  4. Kati Ghaati
  5. Ramgarh Mahal
  6. Some dam near Ramgarh Mahal

The road to the dam was mud and gravel for around 2km, also it passed through a village. When we were getting back, it started raining very heavily and thus we had a hard time getting back. Plus, one of our motorcycles stalled and wont start, so we had to tow it through the off road section in the rain and then push it up the Kati Ghaati.

We started around 7am next morning and visited the following locations :

  1. Kaushak mahal
  2. Shahzaadi ka Roza
  3. Parameshwar tal
  4. Laxman Temple
  5. Singhpur Palace

The road, or should I say the path to Shahzaadi ka Roza was interesting, being a 4 feet wide stone paved way aside a canal. We were finished exploring till 11am and then head back.

On our way back we halted for a while the forest around Pichhore and then had our lunch at Dev Kushwah Dhaba, on the Datia-Gwalior road. The food was good and reasonably priced. After lunch, it rained very hard for around 20 minutes.