Over the last three and a half years I have been travelling in the state of Madhya Pradesh and discovering a magical land whose existence I had hardly suspected. I visited Mandsaur after some twenty visits the state. I begin with it because hardly anybody seems to know about it. Yet it has some of the world’s firsts.

Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Art Shelters
The Longest Rock Art Gallery

This was the trip of my dreams. To Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary (GSS) in the district of Mandsaur in western Madhya Pradesh, the largest state of India. It was by sheer chance that I found Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary has the longest rock art gallery ever, called the Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Shelters. Tucked in the middle of the unending wilderness of Mandsaur, there is also a vulture sanctury here, the Gandhi Sagar dam and an old fort, Hinglajgarh. To my surprise few people have heard of this place; even fewer have visited it. That was an added incentive to make a trip to the area. Not that I needed an incentive to see Rock paintings. Next to the forests of Madhya Pradesh, rock paintings still remain a special favourite. Soon I was dreaming of visiting the Rock Shelters at Chaturbhujnath Nala. A tributary of River Chambal, both banks of Chaturbhujnath Nala, contain rock shelters, their walls covered with rock paintings starting from the Paleolithic Age. They stretch for a total of seven kilometres on either side right down to the confluence of Chaturbhujnath Nala and Chambal.
A single Indian women travelling in India is less common than a foreign woman travelling on her own. Yet, this was not my first trip to Madhya Pradesh and I was confident. Madhya Pradesh still remains a state where warm hearted people abound. A room is reserved for me in the Forest Rest House of Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary (GSS), where amenities are well above basic considering it is in the middle of nowhere. Even more surprising is the constant supply of running water and electricity.
We arrive on a clear January evening. It is desert country and it almost seems the name Sanctuary is a misnomer. After crossing the hard parched field we come to an abrupt halt right before the Rest House. The District Forest Officer is talking to a couple working on behalf of a Non Government Organisation on vultures. We walk into our rooms only to set out in the fading light to catch a glimpse of Gyps vultures now on the verge of extinction. A short drive down the main road brings us to a group of White backed feasting on the carcass of a cow. This is good luck indeed. There are around one and a half thousand white backed, slender billed and long necked, the three species constitutng the Gyps category of vultures in the Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary which demands the status of the first Vulture Sanctuary of the country. The Gyps were all but wiped out and their fight for survival is still on.
The Vultures Sanctuary has only whetted my appetite and I cannot wait for tomorrow, when finally, my dream trip will become a fantastic reality.
We leave the Forest Rest House in the morning in the company of two forest guards. After about 15 kilometres on metalled roads and some 30 km from Bhanpura the nearest city, a faded sign tells the traveller the rock shelters are 6.5 kilometers to the left so we are now trundling along a vast field of dried yellow grass. There are no roads to talk of. Tyre marks on this parched field dotted with spindly trees define the route we must follow. We carry on in a tiny car particularly unsuited to the rough terrain, undaunted. The trees grow in number and merge into what can only rather indulgently be called a forest. This is typical leopard country and I turn to my companions to find out if there are animals in this forest. Oh yes, they reply enthusiastically, foxes, leopards, nilgai, chinkara... I stare out of the window weighing the truthfulness of their statements when I see a movement among the trees. A dark spot moves as no shadow of a branch can ever. We speed up and then the most magnicient Nilgai comes in view. Nilgais abound central India. One has seen them in Pench National Park an well as Ranthambore in Rajasthan, but this is a magnificient specimen. Its sheer size inspires awe in the most seasoned forest man. We look after it as it saunters among the trees swishing its tail, until finally it makes a turn and disappears among the dry branches.
We have barely recoverd from the almost mystical nature of the sighting when our car comes to a halt. The open field has turned into a semi circular area slightly reminiscent of a parking lot. It transpires that is exactly what it is. From here we must continue on foot. There is no track to follow for the valley lies beyond huge boulders guarding as it were the gateway of the Rock Art Shelters. Clambering down the boulders is not particularly easy and relief is unanimous as we reach soft ground. A narrow stream trickles past. The sand is wet and the stream bordered by a dark line of moss. We are here at last.
I take a while to absorb the scene. The Nala forms a pool of water walled in on either side by two long lines of rock shelters. A few trees stand on the edge of the Nala, bright green and soothing to eyes sore from staring at arid land. There is no one around. It is very still and all you can hear is the sound of water rippling on the rocks underfoot. I can hardly believe I have finally made it to the Chatrubhujnath Nala Rock Shelters. All that I have to do now is hop on the rock shelters and start gazing at paintings made hundreds of thousands of years ago by cave men. So, what am I waiting for!
Much later when I sit down to write an account of my trip I realise there were various bits I did not understand about the rock shelters and the terrain. After a couple of attempts at knocking on people’s doors I finally got in touch with Dr Giriraj Kumar of the Rock Art Society of India (RASI) the organisation primarily responsible for discovering this wonder. Dr Kumar, who has been working in this area since 1977, wrote back saying, the Bhanpura-Gandhi Sagar plateau is a dominating topographical feature of the region, and is mainly formed of the Vindhyan rock system. The sandstone has been metamorphosed into hard fine grained quartzite rock.This plateau is full of rift valleys and faults. Chambal river itself flows through the great boundary fault from Gandhisagar to Kota.There are plenty of painted rock shelters in its cliffs on both sides. Similarly, the rift valley is also full of rock shelters. Chaturbhujnath Nala is one such rift valley. He further added, in the Bhanpura region along the Gandhi Sagar water reservoir there is a series of quartzite boulders. They form clusters along a particular line, but do not form a continuous chain, and many of them are painted. Thus the entire Bhanpura region is rich in rock art sites, most of them rock painting sites.
I clamber on to the nearest rock shelter that is roughly a metre and a half above the flowing stream. A wall of rock paintings greets me. And with that, the rest of the world ceases to exist. There they are waiting to welcome me, urging me to discover a world that is only their’s. This is the world of the cave man. He had painted these rocks. Did he dwell here too? There is no one around who can answer my questions. Were these walls painted during rainy afternoons or during the cold winter nights? Did the cave man draw them or were they cave women who whiled away the time painting as their menfolk raided the forest for food. After all, for generations it has been women who have resorted to painting to beautify their homes.
The world of rock paintings never ceases to amaze me. It almost seems magical to think that men living thousands of years ago have left a sign behind that can still be seen today. Here is the handiwork of adimanav, the original man, who had no precedents to follow. He taught himself everything that we, as modern people, take for granted and what is more, he painted too. We owe our knowledge base to them and to them we owe even our artistic abilities. The feelings overwhelming me now are exactly the same that had flooded me three years ago as I had stood before the caves of Bhimbaithka.
The rock shelters of Chaturbhujnath Nala are of course, quite different from the rock caves of Bhimbaithka. Here one can barely stand straight before the paintings. One has to bend low, crawl on all fours and at times even lie on one’s stomach to get a proper view of the drawings. What are these paintings like? I walk from shelter to shelter, camera in hand. The surface is uneven in colour and texture.The colour of the paintings, which is mostly red comes in varying shades: some bright, others a faded maroon. Although I am hardly an expert, the differences in style are obvious. As for the subjects, there are human beings and plenty of animals. One can identify the wild elephants, bisons, tigers, leopards, monkeys, snakes, different species of birds, rhinos, beer, water animals, foxes, cows, bullocks as well as the camels.The familiar sight of a camel caravan in the deserts of Rajasthan are right their on the walls of Chaturbhujnath Nala rock shelters. The people, usually men, are sometmes stick figures, at others two triangles linked by straight lines, with clothes and without. There are only outlines of human beings as well as solid figures. These paintings made thousands and thousands of years before the Christian era are speedy, tell stories and have drama in them. There are events from their daily lives together with exotic geometric patterns.
Most of the paintings are in shades of red, although one does see the occasional yellow and white. In contrast to Bhimbaithka, white is used only sparingly. It is seldom easy to pinpoint the age of rock paintings. One can only assume roughly, that these are between 15 to 20 thousand years old. According to experts (in this case, Jean Clotes from whose writings on Chaturbhujnath nala in the net I learnt most of what follows, as well as references made to research papers by various authors including Dr Kumar) these paintings were started around the upper Paleolithic/Mesolithic era. The styles used are also sometimes indicative of the period of creation. For instance, some of the oldest paintings are done in red and green. Here the men wear masks. Indeed, there are masked men in Chaturbhujnath Nala. Between 12,000 and 6,000 BCE one sees the bow and arrow making an appearance. It is here in Chatrbhujnath Nala that we have clear evidence that domestication of cattle started with humpless wild cattles; archaeological evidence indicates perhaps around 6000 to 5000 BCE. Sword or item of sport hanging from the man’s waist appeared much later. Between 5,000 and 2,500 BCE the axe can be seen, animals become smaller than before. After 2,500 the spear is discovered. Men are represented by triangles and he learns to ride the animals, wage wars and even appease the gods probably through intricate geometric patterns seen on the shelter walls.
Madhya Pradesh is a large state and although there are surely differences in style between various rock shelters, as a perfect non professional in these matters, I could not detect them. On the other hand, the differences in the use of colours are obvious. The amount of white in Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Shelters is not as much as in Pachmarhi. Again, the red in Chaturbhujnath Nala is somewhat different from that of Bhimbaithka. While, in both these places the use of green is minimal. However, the subject matters in both these sites are rather similar except that here in Chaturbhujnath Nala we observe very rare actual hunting scenes in stone age paintings as opposed to plenty in Bhimbetka. The fact is, rock painting is a reflection of the evolution of human cognition and civilisation. Man the wanderer, becomes the fruit gatherer and hunter, the pastoral being and then the farmer. These stages are often recorded in the paintings on the rock surfaces. Consequently, although Bhimbaithka and Chaturbhujnath Nala are at quite a distance from one another, in both these places we find figures of man accompanied by paintings of animals as well. Dr Kumar of RASI informs me that in one of the shelters they had found a picture of a wild horse being hunted by men. He says, this was the first of its kind in the history of Indian rock art. The Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Art Gallery was discovered by Ramesh Pancholi and is maintained by the state's Forest Department. It is being quite well looked after by the Archaeological Survey of India, Bhopal Circle. I learnt from Forest sources that they are now trying to declare the entire area a national park. This is vitally important in view of the Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Shelters. History of man's evolution still holds a great deal of mystery and it is only by declaring the area a National Park can these mysteries be eventually solved, otherwise, these mysteries and with them a bit of our past will be lost for ever. Meanwhile, the least what we can do is to visit and appreciate these sites without any sort of physical interference with the rock art so we on our part may be satisfied that we have contributed a bit to hand over this great heritage of the humans to posterity.


To Reach:
The easiest way is to hire a car from the state capital, Bhopal and drive through Rajgarh and Rajasthan into Mandsaur 365 kilometres north west to Gandhi Sagar Sanctuary, close to the Rajasthan border .

Where to Stay:
There are no tourist accommodations and one has to get in touch with the Forest Department of Madhya Pradesh for a place to stay.

What to see:
Apart from the Chaturbhujnath Nala Rock Shelters, there is
1. Hinglajgarh Fort (11th century)
2. The Vulture Sanctuary
3. Some really old temples like Chaturbhujnath (11th century)