This is where our Pachmarhi road trip begins — the drive out of Bhopal and up into the Satpura hills to Madhya Pradesh’s only hill station. If you’re planning the same trip, this first episode is really a route guide: what the roads are like, where we stopped, and how long it took.
The route we followed
We drove roughly 200 km, taking about four to five hours with breaks:
- Bhopal → Mandideep → Obaidullaganj — fast highway out of the city
- Babai → Sohagpur — open plains and small towns
- Matkuli → Pagara → Pachmarhi — the final climb, where the road narrows and winds up through forest into the hills
This is Day 1, Part 1 of a three-day trip. Once we reached Pachmarhi the same day, we started sightseeing straight away — that’s covered in the next episode.
Planning tip
Start early from Bhopal. Leaving by 7–8 am gets you to Pachmarhi by early afternoon with the whole evening free for the first viewpoints. Fuel up at Obaidullaganj or Matkuli, as options thin out on the final forest climb.
If wildlife is what pulls you, our Day 3 episode covers the Satpura Tiger Reserve safari — the same forest we explore on foot in our Churna, Satpura journal.
