Marble Rocks at Bhedaghat

Bhedaghat, about 25 km south of Jabalpur, is where the Narmada River flows through a narrow gorge of gleaming white marble cliffs rising up to 30 metres on either side. Boat rides through the two-kilometre gorge are available throughout the day, but the experience at full moon or just before sunset, when the marble reflects orange and pink light, is spectacular. The gorge ends at the Dhuandhar Falls ("smoke cascade"), where the river drops about 10 metres in a burst of spray visible and audible from the cliffs above.

The town of Bhedaghat has grown up as a tourist centre around the gorge, with craft shops selling marble carvings (Bhedaghat is a major centre for marble sculpture). A ropeway crosses the gorge near the falls if the crowds at the boat ghat are too long. The Chausath Yogini temple on a hilltop above the gorge — a circular 10th-century Shaivite temple with 64 yogini figures around a central Shiva shrine — is one of the best examples of this unusual temple type in India.

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A story
The Marble Rocks gorge was described by 19th-century British officers as one of the most beautiful sights in India. The geologist William Henry Sleeman, who spent decades in central India, wrote that the gorge at moonlight was "a scene of the most extraordinary grandeur and beauty." The marble here is not the architectural variety but dolomite limestone that has been polished by millennia of river action into smooth, gleaming white and grey walls.

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