Ahmedabad -> Lothal -> Nishkalank Mahadev -> Bhavnagar (26.1.25)
Gujrat deserves a dekko, so when a marriage invitation at Bhuj popped up in the Inbox, out came our planning sheet and we charted out a ten day coverage of Saurashtra and Bhuj area.
How we came to Ahmedabad via Udaipur is another story. All I can tell you is that the blame lies solidly at the doors of Cold Play. They took it into their heads to hold a two-day concert in Ahmedabad, a vegetarian dry state, and the prices of air tickets to Ahmedabad went sky high (pardon the pun). So we flew to Udaipur instead and then took a bus to Ahmedabad yesterday. We stayed with Panna’s cousin, who I was meeting after aeons, and a jollier night of non-drinking revelry could not be found this side of Dholavira.
Leaving Ahmedabad (10.00 am)
Our car reported at 9.00 am, but we left around 10.00 am, having stretched our breakfast with threads of conversation. Incidentally, this was not going to be a self-driving trip. There was an extra entity called the Driver whose sensibilities and opinions had to be accommodated. I would have dearly liked to drive on my own, but Ahmedabad did not give me a choice of a self drive rental, worse luck. But luckily our driver, Hemendra Singh Panwar, a Rajput who had settled in Gujrat for the last 14 years, is a very pleasant man, and pretty co-operative.
Our ultimate destination today was Bhavnagar, south of Ahmedabad, 175 km and 3.5 hours away if we went there straight, but when have we ever gone anywhere straight?
Lothal (11.00 am)
Lothal was an important port in the scheme of Harappan trade. A sort of docking/ trading/ manufacturing port that flourished between 2500-1900 BC, Lothal was situated on the banks of the Bhogava river, a tributary of the Sabarmati, which flowed into the Gulf of Khambaj. It was not a big settlement, but had a dockyard, godowns, an acropolis, bead maker quarters and a cemetery. The level of water in the dockyard was managed through a connection to the Bhogava. It really gives an eerie feeling to be standing at a place which flourished thousands of years ago, which is now a bunch of half demolished brick structures, kept alive through storyboards and artist impressions. Nothing lives forever.
Lunch at a Kathiyawadi Dhaba (1.30 pm)
Many well meaning friends had warned us earlier about Kathiyawadi food, that it is super spicy and danger to civilisation next morning. So like inexorable karma, the simple dhaba where we told our driver to stand on his brakes, was a Kathiyawadi joint. He was, till then, trying to offer us slightly upmarket places, but heaved a sigh of relief when he found that our life choices matched his. Good food, actually, not much spicy, with sev-tomato, daal, eggplant roast mashed, beans dry stir and kadi, mopped up with bajra roti. All for a bank-breaking 130/-.
Nishkalank Mahadev temple (3.30 pm)
Bhavnagar is not a big town, and the seeables were pretty much a few temples and a park, which did not attract our fancy. But the NM temple on the seaside, an hour beyond Bhavnagar, seemed interesting since it is usually almost submerged at high tide and becomes unreachable, and emerges again in low tide and welcomes devotees. The beach had coarse black sand, which was something we did not expect. When we reached however, high tide had started and we could not walk right up to the temple. However, this being a Sunday, there was a fair amount of crowd cavorting on the beach, with a lot of seagulls fluttering around, eating the peanuts being scattered by the kids. We enjoyed the half an hour we spent there, in the open air.
Hotel City Pride, Bhavnagar (5.30 pm)
We retraced our steps to Bhavnagar, an hour away, a small city with population less than a million. We had booked a hotel on the third floor of a mall, which turned out to be a spanking new place, perfect for a one night stay.
Tomorrow we leave for Somnath, via Diu.
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