We’ve recently returned from leading a new trip in Madhya Pradesh and Varanasi, an immersion in ancient, sacred India during the festive harvest season. Madhya Pradesh is an area that has fascinated us since the late '90s when we explored it by bicycle on a two-week trip discovering out-of-the-way wonders in timeless rural India. Sacred Varanasi on the Ganges River is the very heart of ancient classical India, and one of the world's most compelling places.

In the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh we explore traditional Hindu villages and towns, and some of India’s most ancient and wondrous extant temples and monuments; illustrated in virtually every book on Indian art, they are seldom visited by tourists. We will also visit tribal villages, meeting India's original people. Our trip will coincide with two festivals, Diwali in the medieval town of Orchha and Kartik Purnima (a full-moon celebration in honor of the gods) in Varanasi, India’s holiest city.

Some trip highlights:

New Delhi, India’s capital is a spacious, modern garden city with tree-lined avenues and beautiful parks that is home to great landmarks of the British colonial period – monumental expressions of an imperial vision. Here too are some of the great sites of ancient India – monuments that display an amazing fusion of Hindu and Islamic architecture and styles, examples of the way India has always embraced diverse people and traditions and made them her own. Sightseeing in Old and New Delhi includes the Qutab Minar, a World Heritage Monument, rickshaw rides and walks in Old Delhi, and the Jama Masjid (the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s great Friday Mosque).

Orchha in rural India, for Diwali, the Festival of Lights, when every home is aglow with flickering oil lamps and buildings are draped with colored lights to illuminate the god-king Rama’s triumphal return from his victory over the forces of chaos. Trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, bullock carts, thresholds and roads, and even cattle and goats, are colorfully decorated. Surrounded by forested countryside, Orchha has grand, monumental "Escheresque" palaces, temples and nobles' mansions on a fortified river isle, and a charming village ambience. The town’s most important temple is dedicated to Rama and attracts people from the surrounding villages, especially for Diwali.

The romantic medieval towns of Madhya Pradesh. We visit an ancient town completely walled with massive gateways. The old buildings are still lived in and the bazaar is vibrant. On a hill in the center of town is a fort with an evocative palace. The town is home to a renowned and thriving handloom cotton-silk sari industry. We’ll visit a goddess temple carved into the living rock of a hillside overlooking the town. We have dinner in the home of an old friend who has been instrumental in protecting the town's heritage. He will be with us on our explorations of this storybook city.

In a tribal village set in teak forests on a cliff high above the Narmada River, stands one of the oldest freestanding temples in India. A 5th-century masterpiece, this little jewel has remarkably well preserved, nearly life-size sculptural panels – wonders of artistic creation – depicting a mythical journey to spiritual enlightenment.

The 2nd-century BC Buddhist monastic complex at Sanchi, a World Heritage Monument, is famed for its great stupa and its gateways completely covered in remarkably well-preserved, vibrant, lifelike sculpture. This entire region is a wonder- and myth-filled world of still-living ancient India. We visit Gyraspur and a wondrous goddess temple, set in a stunningly dramatic landscape.

Udayagiri is a hamlet with an ancient cave complex and an amazing gigantic stone tableau featuring a statue of the boar incarnation of the god Vishnu saving the earth goddess, who dangles precariously from his tusk, a masterpiece of ancient Gupta dynasty art. Nearby in a small village is a Garuda pillar erected in 150 AD by Heliodorus, a Greek ambassador who converted to Hinduism.

Bhimbetka is the site of recently discovered prehistoric paintings set in a teak forest amid rocky cliffs. Dating from 10,000 BC, the quality and freshness of the art is truly breathtaking. A World Heritage Site, Bhimbetka is home to a set of unusually shaped rock formations. The caves and overhangs within the rocks became shelters and the flat surfaces of these formations became prehistoric man’s magnificent canvas.

In the interior regions of Madhya Pradesh tribal people follow age-old ways of life. We visit their villages and haats (weekly markets), meet the people and a high priest-shaman in a unique outdoor temple, and enjoy local food. In small settlements in the jungle we meet these original people in their ancient homeland. Their warmth, resilience and oneness with the natural world is a lesson for all of us.

Bandhavgarh National Park has the world’s highest density tiger population and so there is an excellent chance of seeing one. Set in rugged hilly terrain and sal forests, there are also leopards, sloth bears, 250 species of birds, wild boar, and several species of deer and antelope. Tribal communities once living inside the park boundaries have re-settled just outside. We visit their homes and have an evening of tribal dance and music at our elegant jungle lodge.

Today Khajuraho is a small village in Central India, but a thousand years ago kings of the Chandella dynasty erected eighty-five temples here. Opulently decorated, each temple is an architectural masterpiece, a microcosmic mountain adorned with exquisitely carved, sensuous, often explicitly erotic sculpture. Abandoned and neglected for more than 700 years, Khajuraho today is a World Heritage Monument and the most alluring temple site in India.

Before returning to Delhi our trip comes to a grand culmination in Varanasi, India’s most sacred city, with Kartik Purnima, a Festival of Lights for the Gods, a fabulous spectacle. Varanasi is a microcosm of the entire subcontinent of India. Here we join pilgrims from all over the country in witnessing and being part of ancient rituals and a timeless way of life, while boating on the River Ganges, riding in bicycle rickshaws, and walking the city’s age-old lanes. We will go boating at sunrise when much of the population of the city comes to the river to bathe, and sunset when the city glows ethereally. We learn how to wear traditional Indian clothing in the local home of our good friends, who accompany us on our explorations of the city.

The price of this trip is $5900 per person based on double occupancy ($1400 single supplement) and includes all accommodation (all rooms with attached bath), meals (B, L, D), snacks and mineral water, entrance fees, road travel by deluxe a/c cars, two short day journeys in a/c trains, two domestic flights, all airport transfers. Group size 8-10 members.
Carol and Martin will guide you throughout the trip.

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