Train journey to the History

Since I joined my job in Chennai I have been going to home (or say North) by flight only. Not that I've got lots of money but the train takes about 36 hours and flight tickets are marginally expensive than 3rd AC, if you book well in advance. My job is highly predictable and I am still a bachelor so I am able to plan 1 to 2 months in advance. 

After enjoying a nice and cold week, after living in Chennai one starts to enjoy cold weather, I started my journey. I had my train scheduled from Agra so took a bus from Jaipur to Agra. The train was from Agra to Bhopal, also called ‘Lake City’. I wished to visit Bhopal for a long time because of Bhimbetka, a place to visit आदिमानव (Ape Man).

Bhimbetka is only 40 km away from Bhopal. I took a taxi and left for the place in the morning. The place is not very big. It is a collection of big rocks which were used by Ape Man as shelters. Archaeologists believe that the place was inhabited by man more than 100,000 years back. There paintings on the rocks. Some of them are white and some are red. No points for guessing that the red ones are newer. They are some 2,000 years old and the white ones are some 5,000 years old. According to historians some of the paintings are 30,000 years old. It is really out of my understanding how could these paintings last so long.

If you notice carefully, the paintings also show a pattern; the way human society has evolved. Some paintings show all the humans separately playing/hunting with animals. They are alone. But some paintings show they are fighting in groups and even dancing in groups holding their hands. It was a nice feeling to visit our ancestors; I saw some them there, I swear. They were jumping on the trees. This place was very calm and scenic, a right place for picnic or day out.

On my way back to Bhopal, I took a right turn towards Bhojpur not to watch a bhojpuri movie but to visit an old temple. It is an old shiv temple with the biggest shivling in the world. This temple is about 1000 years old and has a shivling which is approx. 2 metres high. The temple is not very big but is made of big rocks. A simple work of sheer amazement. There was a jain temple of about same time near shiv temple. This jain temple had 22 feet of Bhagwan Mahaveerji. This is one more place for spending good time. There is a river flowing near the temple which made the place more enjoying.

At night I said bye to bhopal and caught to chennai. This train would dropped me in chennai in evening and I had to sleep at home. I wanted to stay out as much as possible so I broke the journey in a way that I would spend the day time in some city and would reach chennai in morning, after spending the night in train.

I spent the day time in Warangal. What is there to visit? Anybody's guess: temples. Like all the cities of South India Warangal also has famous old temples eg thousand pillars temple, bhadrakali temple, etc. I visited a couple of them and then headed station for my last journey of this trip.

Travelling longitudinal through India I finally reached chennai...

to plan my next trip latitudinal through India...