A Day in the Village of Amla

Wherever you drive across Madhya Pradesh, vast fields of wheat, maize, and soya stretch as far as the eye can see. Irrigated by the Narmada and Tapti rivers, Malwa’s fertile black cotton soil is integral to its prosperity. Raghavendra Singh’s ancestral property Fort Amla is a good place to learn about agri-tourism. Malwa is the largest pea-growing area in India, one of the largest onion growing regions besides Nashik, and the largest producer of oil-grade soyabean, competing with Argentina and Mexico. The garlic grown here is tinier than the large Chinese variant that floods our markets, but the smaller clove of Indian garlic is more pungent and is even imported by China for medicinal use. Take a guided village tour, and walk through fields to experience one day in the life of the heritage village Amla.

Visit MP Tourism

Abhinandita Mathur

Fort Amla, a heritage retreat near Barnagar is a great place to experience agri tours and rural tourism

Abhinandita Mathur

The friendly villagers of Amla are quick to invite strangers in for a cup of tea and conversation

Abhinandita Mathur

A vegetable vendor hawks fresh harvest from the fields around Amla

Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy

A man takes his cows out to graze in the countryside

Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy

Milk is collected locally and then reduced to make khoya or mawa, in small-scale domestic units

Abhinandita Mathur

Rural homes often have wall niches for lamps and knickknacks

Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy

Pulses drying in the veranda of a home in Amla

Abhinandita Mathur

Villagers often embellish the walls of their homes with sacred imagery