Chitrakoot Travel Guide

Chitrakoot straddles the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border on the banks of the Mandakini River, and Hindu tradition holds it as the place where Rama, Sita and Lakshmana spent a significant stretch of their fourteen years in exile. Pilgrims still circle Kamadgiri, the forested hill considered the site's most sacred point, along a parikrama path lined with shrines, and gather at Ramghat for evening aarti as the Mandakini catches the last light. Further out, Hanuman Dhara's spring-fed shrine and the natural caves of Gupt Godavari extend the circuit into the hills, a landscape that has drawn pilgrims for so long, and in such steady numbers, that its real popularity has quietly outpaced whatever rank a spreadsheet once gave it.

According to Ramayana, Chitrakoot was the place where Bharata, brother of Ram came to visit Ram and ask him to come back to Ayodhya and rule the kingdom. It is also believed that the principal gods of Hindus, (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) took incarnations here. This divine city is also known as the 'Hill of many wonders' and it totally justifies the name. Chitrakoot mountain range has numerous places of great religious importance like Bharat Milap Temple, Hanuman Dhara, Janki Kund and much more. It is indeed the gift of nature and the gods.

Chitrakoot is also the place where Goswami Tulsidas, author of 'The Ramcharitmanas', spent many years of his life. There are many lively fairs which are organized on different occasions and festivals. Not many know that Chitrakoot is also home to the only university in the world specially made for the differently-abled, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University. 

Thus, Chitrakoot is rightly called the Place of Many Wonders!