V.S. Wakankar's 1957 Train-Window Discovery (Nagpur-Bhopal Line).
Tour guides race you through the 15 shelters open to the public, but most never tell you that the entire UNESCO World Heritage Site exists because an archaeologist literally jumped off a moving train on 23 March 1957.WHY NOBODY KNOWS
Dr. Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar was travelling Nagpur-Bhopal on the Itarsi line that morning when he saw oddly stacked sandstone boulders out his compartment window. The train wasn't scheduled to stop. He jumped off, walked back to investigate, and identified rock art that would push back the dated record of art in the Indian subcontinent by roughly 30,000 years. Wakankar then spent his career cataloguing 1,532 rock shelters across 36 regions before dying in 1988. Ask the ASI guide for the spot where Wakankar first descended the hill — it is on the marked Bhimbetka I-II zone trail.
