Kankrajhor

The name means “hilly land filled with jungles” in the local dialect, kankra for hill and jhor for forest and that is precisely what it is: 9,000 hectares of dense, undulating hardwood forest draped over the Dolma range foothills, hard against the Jharkhand border. Kankrajhor is the circuit's emotional centre, the place travellers find themselves returning to.
The forest is a mosaic of Sal (Shorea robusta, the tall, straight-trunked sentinel of Jangal Mahal), teak, Mahua (whose spring blossoms are distilled into tribal liquor), Kusum, Piyal and Akashmani. Cashew, coffee and orange are cultivated in small clearings. Birdlife is excellent: Indian peafowl, racket-tailed drongo, hornbills in winter and assorted raptors riding the thermals off the ridges.
Kankrajhor is part of a functioning elephant corridor linking Dalma Sanctuary (Jharkhand) with the Subarnarekha forests; herds pass through in monsoon and post-monsoon. Sloth bears and the occasional leopard are still recorded. You are unlikely to see any large mammals on a short visit, but the possibility sharpens the experience; walk with a local guide if you venture into the deeper forest.
Within the Kankrajhor complex, don't miss:

• Dharagiri Falls: a small but very pretty waterfall on a forest trail, reached by a 20-minute walk.
• The ridge viewpoint above the village, where the forest tumbles away to reveal the Jharkhand horizon.
• Amlasole village: once a notorious symbol of tribal hunger that triggered a political reckoning in 2004; today a quiet hamlet with a small homestay scene and the nearest thing the circuit has to a “tribal homestay”.

Night in Kankrajhor is the single finest thing this circuit offers. When the sun drops behind the sal canopy and the cottages’ hurricane lamps are lit, you begin to hear the steady, low pulse of the Madol drum from the Santhali settlements scattered through the forest. The beat is never performative; it is the genuine rhythm of community evenings, and when it rises and falls with a distant chorus of voices, it is one of the purest sounds in India.