There's more to Madhya Pradesh than Khajuraho's erotic sculptures

Of all the intricately carved panels on the tall stone gateway, one in particular holds your gaze. Engraved with a river scene, it shows three figures rowing a canoe among lotus buds, lily blossoms and water birds, one of which has its head thrown back as it gobbles down a fish. A crocodile, its teeth and scales clearly visible, pokes its curving snout out of the water in the top corner. The faces of the canoeists have weathered, but the feathers on the birds' wings and the wriggly lines - used universally to depict water - look as though they were engraved yesterday.

The panels adorn the north gate of the Great Stupa of Sanchi, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The inner core of the stupa is believed to date back to about 250BC, to the time of the greatest of all Mauryan kings, Ashoka the Great, a Buddhist convert. The four magnificent ceremonial gateways were added in the 1st century BC, with Buddhist statues and outer buildings built in the 5th and 12th centuries. Deserted by the 14th century, the site was rediscovered by British archaeologists in 1818. Unlike with other great monuments, it was not dismantled and shipped to faraway museums, and was instead painstakingly restored in situ.

A Unesco World Heritage site, Sanchi is known to pilgrims from Thailand, Korea and Japan, but to few other foreigners. Even less well known are the nearby Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka and their 10,000-year-old cave paintings.

The sense of isolation in remote Bhimbetka, combined with the knowledge that mankind has been taking shelter here for tens of thousands of years, makes walking through the water-worn canyons and caves a deeply humbling experience. The rocks, layered in bands coloured ochre, oatmeal and coral, and painted with elephants, antelopes, birds and hunters on horseback, lead up a gentle hill, the final outcrop silhouetted against a giant sky. Beyond, the ground plunges to a wide valley.