Satpura Travel Guide: Zones, Boats, Walking and Planning Your Visit

Satpura is a rugged reserve of sandstone hills, gorges, waterfalls and reservoirs, and the forest department offers it by jeep, by boat and canoe, and on foot with a guide. Its core and buffer zones have separate gates, so read the zones before you book a room.

Madhai and the Tawa reservoir

Madhai is the best known core zone, with a small daily limit that the forest department's brochure puts at 30 vehicles across the morning and afternoon drives. Besides jeep drives, the brochure lists boat rides, canoeing and trekking here. The Tawa reservoir, which has more than 220 sq km inside the protected area, gives the reserve a large wetland with resident and wintering waterfowl, mugger crocodiles and a small population of otters. The reserve names a third entrance on the Tawa dam, close to Narmadapuram town.

Churna and the Bheemkund gate

The reserve lists Bheemkund (Churna) as another core zone, with Mallupura and Panarpani (Pachmarhi). The brochure says visitors to Churna can bring their own four-wheeled vehicle, provided it can handle rough forest ground and is pollution-free, and it names two forest rest houses there. Churna is 65 km from Itarsi and 106 km from Bhopal. The reserve says the Madhai, Churna and Bori areas hold fairly good tiger populations.

Jamani Dev and Parsapani

These are the buffer zones near Madhai, open to private-vehicle safaris with 14 vehicles in the morning and 14 in the afternoon, by the brochure. The reserve's profile lists two more buffer zones, Burgodi (Pipariya) and Tamia Delakhari. Its fee schedule lists walking and cycling, watching from hides at identified sites in the buffer, and pre-marked camping in the buffer.

Pachmarhi and its viewpoints

Pachmarhi, the "Satpura ki Rani" (Queen of Satpura), lies inside the reserve and is the only designated hill station of Madhya Pradesh, by the reserve's account. It stays open to visitors all year. Watch the sunset from Dhoopgarh, which MP Tourism calls the highest point of the Satpura range at 1,350 m, and ask the reserve for its list of more than thirty viewpoints and pools, with names such as Duchess Fall and Piccadilly Circus. The reserve's fee schedule adds a registered-guide charge for touring Pachmarhi's tourist areas, so expect a guide here too.

Falls, caves and Bison Lodge

Bee Falls (Jamuna Prapat) is about 5 km from the Pachmarhi bus stand. Apsara Vihar is a ten-minute walk downhill, and the reserve says Rajat Prapat, the Silver Falls, drops more than 350 feet, though little water runs there outside the rains. The five Pandav Caves give the town its name, although archaeologists date them to a Buddhist monastery of the sixth to seventh century. Bison Lodge, built in 1862 by Captain James Forsyth, is now a wildlife museum and the reserve's ticketing centre.

Mahadeo and Chauragarh

Ten km from Pachmarhi, the Mahadeo and Chauragarh hills are the second and third highest peaks of the range, at 1,328 and 1,308 m, and hold three shrines: Bada Mahadeo, Gupt Mahadeo and Chauragarh. The reserve says a very big fair is held here every year on Mahashivratri, and Jatashankar, a cave shrine of Shiva, lies half a kilometre from the town.

Rock shelters

The reserve calls Satpura very important for archaeology and for the study of how people lived here: it holds more than 50 rock shelters with paintings that are between 1,500 and 10,000 years old, some of them with rare depictions. The reserve also lists heritage sites in its Kamti range, among them rock paintings, rock figures of Durga and Shankar, a building called Jhinjhini Mahal and the gate of Raja Bhabhut Singh's fort. Ask the reserve before you go which sites can be visited.

The Satpura hills

The name comes from Sanskrit and means seven folds or seven hills. The reserve describes the range as a watershed between the Narmada and Tapti rivers, running from eastern Gujarat through the Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh border towards Chhattisgarh, and as the range that separates the Indo-Gangetic plain from the Deccan plateau, alongside the Vindhyas to its north. In these hills sal forest grows on Gondwana sandstone on the Pachmarhi plateau and teak on basalt on the lower plain.

Wildlife

The forest department counts 52 mammal species, 31 reptiles and over 300 birds here. The Indian giant squirrel, flying squirrel and leaf-nosed bats live in the trees, and the reserve counts 26 Himalayan and 42 Nilgiri species, which has earned it the label of the northern extremity of the Western Ghats. Among the birds are the Malabar pied hornbill, Malabar whistling thrush and Madhya Pradesh's state bird, the paradise flycatcher. Tigers are present, but the reserve also names birds and other mammals as its draw.

The reserve says the park is officially open to tourism from 16 October to 30 June and is usually open from 15 October, with October to June the best time. State wildlife rules allow some limited areas to reopen between 1 and 15 October.

• November to February: winter. The reserve says Pachmarhi is 5 to 6 degrees cooler than the plains and has recorded as low as 1°C, and frost is frequent in the river valleys. Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism's site, calls December to February the most comfortable for walking.
• March to June: summer, intensely dry and hot; Narmadapuram has reached 45°C. The Ministry's page adds that April to June is often best for seeing wildlife near water. Pachmarhi stays moderate.
• July to September: the monsoon, which the reserve says arrives around the end of June and brings about 1,300 mm to Narmadapuram district and about 1,700 mm to Pachmarhi. The core gates stay shut from 1 July until 30 September.

Only the core closes: the state's rules keep buffer areas of tiger reserves open all year, and Pachmarhi's tourist spots have no closed period, so Pachmarhi stays open to tourists through the rains. Which buffer gates take bookings on a given monsoon date is shown on the booking site.

• By air: the reserve names Bhopal, Jabalpur and Nagpur. Bhopal is nearest: its road distance to the Madhai gate is 140 km, to Churna 106 km and to the Pachmarhi gate 210 km, by the reserve's figures (MP Tourism gives about 222 km from Bhopal airport to Pachmarhi).
• By train: the reserve lists Itarsi, Pipariya, Sohagpur and Narmadapuram. Pachmarhi is 54 km by road from Pipariya, the usual station for the hill station, and Churna is 65 km from Itarsi.
• By road: the Madhai gate is about 19 km off the Pipariya to Narmadapuram road, with the turn near Sohagpur. From Nagpur, Madhai is 300 km and Pachmarhi 259 km. From Jabalpur, Pachmarhi is 241 km. The reserve advises a car with good ground clearance, because the approach roads are rough and muddy in the rains and poorly signposted.

For the rest of the state, see our Madhya Pradesh travel guide. Our guide to domestic flights covers the air route.

• Book on the official site: the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department's booking portal, forest.mponline.gov.in, sells Satpura safari permits. The reserve's home page mentions a 120-day booking window opening at 11 am; both can change, so check the notice when you book.
• A park guide is compulsory: the reserve says it is compulsory to take an official guide with every vehicle, and the state's rules require all visitors to be accompanied by a licensed local guide. Obey the guide: the reserve says it is for your safety. A full-vehicle permit covers up to six tourists, with drivers and guides not counted among them.
• A naturalist is an extra: a naturalist registered with the park may ride as an affiliate if a seat is free. The park guide rides along regardless.
• Rules on the road: keep to 20 km/h, do not blow the horn or play music, stay in the vehicle unless the guide tells you to get down, and leave animals the right of way. Do not smoke, light a fire or litter, and take your rubbish out. Use a phone only for photographs, with the sound off.
• What to wear and carry: light-coloured clothes that blend with the forest, no strong perfume, and drinking water. Carry a valid permit and photo ID.
• Children: under the state's rules, children under five share a parent's seat, and children from five to twelve take their own seat at half the single-seat fee.
• Where to stay: the park runs forest rest houses, three at Pachmarhi, two at Churna and one at Madhai, booked through the reserve's office. Private lodges stand near the gates. See our page on wildlife lodges.