Qualla: Satpura Range

Satpura Range: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Abhi (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2013 (UTC)), CC BY-SA 3.0. Rudyard Kipling called them the Seeonee Hills. He set The Jungle Book in their sal forests and bamboo thickets, letting Mowgli run through ravines that real wolves and tigers still patrol. The Satpura Range stretches over 900 kilometers across central India, from eastern Gujarat through Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh into Chhattisgarh, forming one of the subcontinent's most consequential geological boundaries. Together with the parallel Vindhya Range to the north, the Satpura divides India into two worlds: the Indo-Gangetic Plain above, the Deccan Plateau below.

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Image: (Abhi (talk) 16:42, 13 December 2013 (UTC)) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Satpura Range: The Spine Between Two Indias

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shwetmehta, CC BY-SA 4.0. Geologically, the Satpura is a horst -- a block of earth's crust pushed upward between two parallel faults. The Narmada Graben runs along its northern flank; the smaller Tapi Graben flanks it to the south. Two of India's great westward-flowing rivers owe their courses to this str...

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Image: Shwetmehta | CC BY-SA 4.0

Satpura Range: Tiger Country

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yashjaiswal12, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Satpura's forests once sheltered Indian elephants, Asiatic lions, and Asiatic cheetahs -- all now gone from these hills. What remains is still extraordinary. The range harbors Bengal tigers, leopards, gaur, dhole, sloth bears, the four-horned chousingha, barasingha deer, and ...

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Image: Yashjaiswal12 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Satpura Range: Peaks, Pilgrims, and Hill Stations

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rajkrchoudhury, CC BY-SA 3.0. The range's highest point is Dhupgarh, at 1,352 meters, located near the hill station of Pachmarhi -- a place the British developed as a sanatorium and summer capital for the Central Provinces, and which locals call Satpura ki Rani, the Queen of Satpura. At the range's eastern en...

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Image: Rajkrchoudhury | CC BY-SA 3.0

Satpura Range: Kipling's Landscape, Still Breathing

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit abhiriksh, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pench Tiger Reserve, in Seoni district, preserves part of the landscape Kipling imagined for Mowgli. The lush sal and bamboo forests, grassy meadows, and deep ravines of Kanha also featured in the novel. Walking through these forests today, you can understand what captured Ki...

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Image: abhiriksh | CC BY-SA 3.0