Pachmari :India
Madhya Pradesh is one o{ the largest, least densely populated and least known states of India. It hardly ever made the national news bulletins until the Bhopal gas disaster gave worldwide notoriety to its peaceful, lakeside capital. If you want an unusual holiday, try exploring this state which has more to offer than the famous tourist centre and temple town of Khajuraho. Bhopal is only a short flight or an eight-hour train journey from Delhi by Shatabdi. From Bhopal it is a mere 210 kilometres (131 miles) to Pachmarhi, 1,067 metres (3,501 feet) above sea level in the Mahadeo Hills of the Satpura range.

Madhya Pradesh has many hills but only one hill station — Pachmari. The plateau on which it stands may once have lain at the bottom of an ancient sea. The name means ‘five dwellings’ and refers to five caves near the centre of the hill station where the five Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata epic are said to have spent their exile. The settlement was created as a sanatorium and summer retreat for the British in the then Central Provinces in the 1860s. It was discovered by Captain J Forsyth, when he was sent to explore the forests of the Satpura range in 1862. Forsyth was a remarkable man; an environmental zealot, who explored the forests of central India. Despite his lack of formal training he became an expert in local natural history. Unfortunately he died young. He wrote of Pachmari: ‘Everywhere the massive groups of trees and park-like scenery strikes the eye, and the greenery of glades and wild flowers, unseen at lower elevations, maintains the illusion that the scene is a bit out of our own temperate zone rather than of the tropics.’

Forsyth’s memory, however, is not honoured and the spot from which he first laid eyes on Pachmari, Forsyth Point, is now called Priyadarshini after the late prime minister, Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi. As far as names are concerned, Pachmari has cast off the imperial yoke much more thoroughly than most hill stations. Bishop’s Squeeze, Piccadilly Circus and Hog’s Back have been Sanskritised and Irene, Helen and Kitty, not to mention Lansdowne, Malcolm and Frazer, have all been officially banished. Luckily for Saunders, he has just about survived in the renamed Sundar (Beautiful) Pool.