Ajodhya Hill and Forest Reserve Area

The Ajodhya Hill and Forest Reserve Area is home to the magnificent Ajodhya Hills in the Purulia district of West Bengal.

Understand
It is a part of the Dalma Hills and extended part of Eastern Ghats range. The highest peak of Ajodhya Hills is Chemtaburu. The nearby populated town area is Bagmundi. Distance from Kolkata is 332 km.

This area has become popular with tourists. Winter gets maximum tourists, with a few tourists visiting the other months for various tourism interests, like trekking nature trails, to enjoy the rains and the cultural diversity. It's a popular place for young mountaineers to learn the basic and advance course in rock climbing.

Landscape
The area is a mix of hills with mid dense forest; in some places the forest is deep. It is part of Dalma Forest and part of the Chota Nagpur Plateau. Hills are rocky and surrounding plan lands are mixed boulder zone with steep landscape. Hillocks range from few hundred feet up to around. There are 9 dams and water reservoirs in and around the hill region. Few water streams and 3 waterfalls get water during the rains and keep flowing through the winter till the summer heat dries them up.

Flora and fauna
Mostly Sal and Segun forest mixed with species like Palash, Kusum, Mahua, Neem, Kend etc. Plants like Aswagandha, Satmuli, and Vrigoraj, Haritaki, Amla, Bahera, Karanj, Neem, Bamboo, Kendu etc. are commonly found. 14 species of orchids are found there.

There are 39 species of mammals (5 in Schedule - I: Pangolin, wolf, leopard cub, leopard, elephant), 9 species of amphibians, 27 species of fish, 9 species of mollusks. The most interesting is the Madras tree shrew, found on the top hills of this ecosystem and nowhere else in West Bengal. Ajodhya hill ecosystem hosts few numbers of mega-mammals like elephant. Though major elephant habitat is engulfed by PPSP, in 2018 the number of such resident elephants was considered to be 8-10. Seasonally, herds of elephant from nearby Jharkhand forest take shelter in this area for days together in different seasons of the year.

Besides, it's a place of various species of birds and snakes.

Get in
Depending on the route, the Ajodhya Hills are about from Purulia town.