[sukhbirST]

Thanks for sharing the lovely travelogue with good sunset photgraphs. Liked the ASI plaque readouts at various historical monuments. The best times to visit are during monsoon. During my visit ,wayback in 2011 happened to see the fossilled trees and dinosuar eggs at the Dinosaur park.

[JoshMachine]

Originally Posted by vineetklkrn

Thanks for sharing the travelogue. Very well written. The architecture is stunning and so is the photography and narration!

Thanks Vineet, glad you liked it!

Originally Posted by sandeepsc

Thanks for intrducing this unique historical place. I had just heard about this place but not knowing that it has such magnificiant architecture. Your narration and photos has generated curiocity to visit this place. One more place added to my bucket list. I have heard a lot about great street food available in and around Indore. Have you tried them also? Thanks for sharing with us.

Thanks Sandeep for the kind words! Please do visit Mandu, am sure you will find it a great place.
Regarding Indore street food, yes, we visited the famed "Chappan Dukaan" (my last post in the travelogue). Found it great! It is a series of 56 shops (some are merged, so the actual count is less) that cater to almost all types of snacks, street food etc.

Originally Posted by nitin_knw

Wonderful post, the architecture is really amazing at Mandu, got a chance to visit in December 2021 luckily it was during the ongoing Mandu festival with lot of adventure activities going on.

Thanks Nitin!
So you got to visit in December, that must have been some experience, wow!

Originally Posted by sukhbirST

Thanks for sharing the lovely travelogue with good sunset photgraphs. Liked the ASI plaque readouts at various historical monuments. The best times to visit are during monsoon. During my visit ,wayback in 2011 happened to see the fossilled trees and dinosuar eggs at the Dinosaur park.

Thanks Sukhbir!
Couldn't agree more that the best time to visit Mandu is perhaps monsoon, or maybe just after that.
The Dinosuar park should be quite an unique experience, is that somewhwere nearby?

[sukhbirST]

Thanks Josh, well the Dino Adventure Park & resort is MP's first and India's 4th dinosaur fossil museum and entertainment park. Located approximately 4 km away from Mandav, (Dhar-Mandav Road) is the perfect place for everyone to enjoy their weekend. The fossilized remains of flora and fauna from 6.5 crore years ago at this park, have attracted several tourists from across the globe. Fossils excavated from the Narmada basin find a pride of place here. You can find fossils of starfish skeletons, bones and teeth, dinosaur eggs, etc. The park now houses exciting adventure rides and a cafe-restaurant.

[antz.bin]

Originally Posted by JoshMachine

Mandu. Mandavgad. Mandava.

Read your triplog a few days back and just yesterday I came back from my own trip to Maheshwar and Mandu.

While the trip itself was a mixed bag, the experience of driving and even walking in MP was nothing short of frustrating. The one thing I found peculiar is that the road sense of almost all MP-09 drivers I encountered was nothing short of atricious. I mean us MH-12 drivers are no saints but MP-09 ones that I saw were next level douches. (no offends to fellow TBHPians driving MP-09 vehicles) Do you concur?

I had last driven through MP exactly 10 years back in August 2012 and in Feb 2012. At the time, I was on a motorcycle and I was pushed off the road at highway speeds (80-110 kph) by MP registered trucks over 30 times in 1 day in about 300km of 2-lane highway driving. That was approximately once every 10 minutes on an average at highway speeds. The experience has left me traumatized to say the least.

This time around, even though I was on a car and I wasn't pushed off the road specifically but the situation was not much better. The following were common occurrences in my 4 day trip.

1. Vehicles accelerating (instead of backing off) when they see someone crossing the road at a safe distance. This happened to me more than once when I was crossing a single lane road with my 2-yr old daughter in my arms
2. Overtaking from the right, in front of the nose of a car which is in the middle of a U-Turn. Multiple instances across the entire trip.
3. Blocking the reverse path of a car attempting a J-turn by occupying the space vacated behind it. In effect blocking both sides of the entire road. Happened multiple times. The most comic one being a Tempo traveller blocking the entire road to Jahaz Mahal because an MP-09 Ecosport had too little patience.
4. Not giving way to vehicles climbing up ghats. Innumerable instances.
5. Inconsiderate Parking, blocking exits and getting cars stuck.
6. Blocking a single lane bridge with cars entering from both sides.

Yup, I saw all of the above in just about 400ish km of driving in MP in 3-4 days. Maybe less. Would take a couple of years to experience at least 1 instance of all 6 above in Pune.

I thought this was all common courtesy and have rarely faced such problems in my 1000s of km of travel in 17 states/UTs *across India* but this trip was next level worst. It was so bad that I was legit trolling MP registered cars with light and sound shows (if you know what I mean) whenever I saw such antics on the highway *after* I had entered MH again. I mean, I know the road surfaces in MH are far worse but at least people know how to drive considerately.

Sorry for the rant but this is something that anyone driving from Maharashtra needs to know before they embark on a trip to Mandu. I couldn't find a more apt place to post this. Maybe I will write my own triplog and mention everything in detail but this had to be written somewhere.