Bhopal
The city of Bhopal combines scenic beauty, history and modern urban planning. The old city has teeming market places and historical mosques and palaces, often from the time of the succession of powerful Begums who ruled Bhopal from 1819 to 1926. Equally impressive is the new city with its verdant, exquisitely laid out parks and gardens, broad avenues and streamlined modern edifices.Places to Visit
The Taj-ul-Mashid is one of the largest mosques in India. This pink mosque has two massive white-domed minarets and three white domes over the main building. The Moti Mashid is architecturally akin to Delhi's Jama Masjid.The Bharat Bhawan houses an impressive collection of rural and tribal arts, a modern art gallery, crafts gallery, print maker’s studio and theatre for performing arts. The Museum of Man is an open-air museum of tribal life, spread over an entire hillock. Specialist tribal craftsmen and women from all corners of India were brought in to construct and maintain authentic replicas of traditional tribal houses, compounds, and religious shrines.
Sanchi & Udaigiri
Among the earliest monuments of ancient India that have survived are the Buddhist stupas of Sanchi, standing dramatically atop a hill less than 50 km away from Bhopal. The most famous stupa is encircled by a railing cut by four exquisitely carved gateways facing the four directions of the compass. The carvings show a world where people and animals live together in happiness.Udaigiri is just 13 km away from Bhopal, and is famous for its rock-cut sanctuaries and caves, which are carved into a sandstone hill.
Bhimbetka
Amongst the boulder strewn landscape of the Vindhya mountain range is a collection of 600 rock shelters dating back to the Neolithic Age. Visitors are allowed to explore 15 of these rock shelters to see cave paintings in bold red, white and yellow depicting animals, hunts and the daily scenes in the lives of people during the Stone Age.UNESCO has acknowledged this priceless treasure by giving it World Cultural Heritage status.
