From the Statue of Unity to the Sabarmati Ashram, taking in Gujarat’s incredible historical heritage in between, The Pioneer goes on an incredible voyage of discovery through India’s westernmost state with this year’s bestselling new Sports Utility Vehicle

Gujarat is hardly the first state in India you think of when you consider history, culture and tourism. Sure, it runs an impressive advertising campaign with no less than Amitabh Bachchan promoting the Rann of Kutchh. It indeed grabs eyeballs but it is only while driving through the state that you recognise its historical and cultural significance. So when Hyundai invited The Pioneer to participate in the Great India Drive, the area that we were given to explore — Ahmedabad — was a bit puzzling. I was disappointed since we were being flagged off from the Statue of Unity, which is a two-hour drive from Vadodara, hardly an ‘epic’ route.

How wrong I was! During this drive, I discovered so much about the state. This tour reaffirmed the fact that driving isn’t just about the journey, it is a voyage of discovery. And the Great India Drive opened my eyes to a lot about Gujarat. I hope that my journey of discovery lives up to its name and reaches the readers.

Joined by lawyer and amateur historian, Talish Ray, our route discovered history, food and craftsmanship. It is wonderful to see the way that history and modernity can exist next to each other in India. We were flagged off from the Statue of Unity, the giant monolith of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first Home Minister and the man who effectively formed the Union by bringing in the 500-plus princely states into the nation. This 182-meter tall statue overlooks another engineering marvel of modern India, the Sardar Sarovar Dam and it’s reservoir.

The first thing you have to understand about Gujarat is that it has always played a pivotal role in the history of the subcontinent. The Indus Valley Civilisation existed here and evidence of that is found in the ruins of Lothal, a port city in the Gulf of Khambhat. Goods from India were traded to European civilisations such as the Grecian states, Egypt, Rome and crucially the Phoenicians, the major traders of the Mediterranean. The very existence of Lothal is proof that the people of Gujarat have always been traders, thanks to the state’s vast shoreline and sheltered ports. It is by no means a recent occurrence. We discovered later that the great wealth of the Solanki empire and the Gujarat Sultanate came from trading. It led to the stunning architecture in the classical and medieval era.

The state got its name and identity from the Gurjar tribe. There is genealogical evidence that they moved in from Central Asia or present-day Iran. Of course, genealogy is a very controversial path to take in today’s hypersensitive times but the Gurjars did give the state its name. The great wealth of the region attracted immigrants and invaders for millennia, not just Turkic and European ones in the medieval and pre-modern times but also several kingdoms under the Gupta clan. Although the first major ‘Gujarati’ state was that of the Khichi Rajputs but historians doubt that the Rajput clans were identified as such back then.

This brings us to the sites we visited, starting with Champaner. The major remains come from pre-Mughal times, making them younger than some of the other sites. But the location, particularly the Pavagadh hill, is important as it is the only mountain for miles around, giving commanding views all the way into the fertile plains of the Malwa region. This makes it an obvious site to build a city and garrison. The hill has had a Kali temple that has been around in one form or another since even before recorded history. The site was first developed by the Chavda dynasty and it’s king, Vanaraj Chavda. He apparently named the fort after his general Champaraj, although there are sources that say that the area got its name from the champa flower endemic to the region. The site, as we see it today, is from the Gujarat Sultanate and then known as Mohammedabad. It was the capital of the region though it was moved back to Ahmedabad before Mughal Emperor Humayun sacked the city (after his defeat by Sher Shah Suri and the loss of Delhi). The attack meant that the city was abandoned and today remains as the only example of a standing pre-Mughal Islamic city in India. This allows us to see how the Islamic rulers of Gujarat incorporated the skills of the state’s master craftsmen, showing a continuity to sites of the Solanki Empire three-four centuries older as well as displaying how grand Mughal architecture was inspired from Gujarat which was finally conquered by Akbar and effectively became part of India thereafter.

After visiting a strangely empty Champaner, strange since the site is a UNESCO recognised World Heritage Site, we drove to Ahmedabad past Vadodara. Avoiding the new Expressway connecting Gujarat’s two largest cities and sticking to the old highway, which is as fast and an equally smooth road, the Venue’s great ride and a good music system made the three-hour drive quite comfortable. That said, I have come to believe that poor driving habits are what unify Indians, and with Gujarat bizarrely not notifying the new Motor Vehicles Act, helmet compliance by two wheeler drivers was abysmal. While there were a disconcertingly large number of CCTV cameras across the state, both in towns and in villages, it doesn’t seem to deter rulebreakers. Reaching late in the evening, we checked into our hotel, as the next day was going to be a busy one.

Our second day was to take us to Modhera and Patan, sites around the industrial city of Mehsana. Several years ago, while working for another publication, I had visited the McCain foods factory where the Canandian company processes potatoes grown in the region into the french fries you love to eat at fast-food restaurants. Again, the fact that spectacular historical sites and high-tech factories can exist a few kilometres apart is something that really makes India unique, much more so than any other country in the world. Both the sites we visited — Modhera Surya Mandir and the jaw-droppingly spectacular Rani Ki Vav — were built during the reign of Bhimdeva, the great Solanki king, the latter for his queen Udaymati.

While Bhimdeva was to become a great conquering king later in his reign and the Solanki empire was to rule a swathe of western India comprising parts of modern Gujarat, Sindh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, his reign had an inauspicious start with the first raid of the notorious Mahmud of Ghazni and the destruction of the first Somnath Temple. On a side note, the colonial British believed that the doors of the Somnath Temple adorned Ghazni’s grave and to curry favour with Gujarati merchants they went to Ghazni’s gravesite, stripped the doors and brought them back to India only to discover that the wood on the doors wasn’t the sandalwood that they expected but teak. These doors apparently still lie in the Agra Armoury. The entire story of that and how Sardar Patel ordered the rebuilding of the Somnath Temple can be the topic of another story. But maybe as penance for the destruction of the temple or simply as a show of might, Bhimdeva constructed some of the most spectacular Hindu monuments in the eleventh century C.E  which have survived

The intricately constructed sites, the stepwell outside the Modhera temple with its 108 little shrines and the stunning albeit florid Rani Ki Vav with images of the avatars of Vishnu are not just impressive because of the stonework but also because they survived. The irony was that many of the masons were from lower castes and could not visit the temples to admire their own work.

Not just time but keeping in mind human destruction, one cannot help but praise the Archeological Survey of India for doing such a great job. The Rani Ki Vav in particular, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been extensively and painstakingly cleaned although maybe protection for all the sites we visited from modern-day humans can be improved.

In addition, while the ASI has done a great job restoring the sites, it is extremely difficult for visitors to find information about their different aspects, particularly those related to ornate ones. The technology exists today for the ASI to make apps that can explain individual parts of monuments to visitors whether they are the intricate jalis on the windows at Champaner’s Jami Masjid or the depictions of the avatars of Vishnu at Rani Ki Vav. Also, it might not be a bad idea to have proper cafes where visitors could grab a tea or a cold-drink as well as a snack. Earlier this year, I had travelled to the Alhambra in Spain, the grand fort at Granada, the capital of Andalus the once Islamic part of the Spanish peninsula and while it is impressive, coming from India, you know that there are equally good sites in our country. In just two days I saw three amazing sites but clearly, also, pathetic marketing. Putting the Rani Ki Vav on our new Rs 100 note might make some more people familiar with it, despite the awful lilac tinge of the note but nothing prepares you for the three-dimensional brilliance of the site itself. But even Ahmedabad residents I met, who had travelled the world on holidays and talked about visiting the (quite lovely) temples of Angkor, hadn’t bothered to take a two-hour drive down to see what surrounds them.

Day three would be Talish’s last day with us. Until now we hadn’t found a great Gujarati food place as most highway restaurants served Punjabi food and at Patan we had tried a quite hideous Cheese ki sabzi, with actual chunks of Amul Cheese, I kid you not. But those who know Ahmedabad will tell you that if you want Gujarati food you go to Swati Snacks. And while this chain began in Mumbai 60 years ago, it has become a staple of Amdabadi life in the 15 years it has been around in the city. Shaan Jhaveri who runs the restaurant in the city told me that the restaurant is a place where multiple generations can sit and enjoy food together. After all, it is an important part of culture. Sure, Gujarati food as we know it is primarily vegetarian but there is also a vibrant eating culture in the city. And there is some very good ice-cream too particularly at Shankar’s Ice Cream Library which in the humble opinion of a sweet-toothed Bengali makes possibly the best of this cold dessert in the country.

Before that we had gone to the Patang Vali Gali in Ahmedabad’s Jamalpur district in the old city. This area which was devastated in 2002 still houses some of India’s finest craftsmen, in this case kite makers. Unfortunately in this lane, like so many other such places across the country, the trade is dying out. Disinterest by the next generation and being swamped by Chinese imports is killing the profession. Watching a master kitemaker make a kite is amazing and while that narrow lane is not somewhere even an urban warrior like the Hyundai Venue can enter, it is a place that you must visit in Ahmedabad, just like Rani Ni Hajiro nearby where you find merchants selling handmade cloth and trinkets from all over the state.

On the last day, I decided to bookend the trip by visiting the site of another famous Gujarati, but one who belongs to every Indian. So much so that we all know him as the ‘Father’ of the modern nation state of India. Once on the outskirts of the city, the Sabarmati Ashram is now surrounded by the city. Yet it remains an island of peace and serenity in the midst of urban chaos. It is the place where Mahatma Gandhi spent a majority of his time from its inception in 1917 and also the location from where he began the famous Dandi March to protest the Salt Tax the British had imposed. This protest began the steady decline of the British Raj. It is a place, that I believe, every Indian should make a pilgrimage to once in their lives. It was a great site to end the Great India Drive at the home of the Greatest Indian.

Champaner

The only extant example of a pre-Mughal Islamic city that survives in India, Champaner was founded in the 10th  century by Vanaraj Chavda. But it was only after the capture of Champaner by Mahmud Begada in the 1420’s that the city, as we know it today, came into being. Mahmud renamed the city Mohammadabad and went on a construction spree building several mosques, the four most notable ones that survive to this day are the Sheher Ki Masjid, Kevada Masjid, Nagina Masjid and the Jami Masjid. The last is one of the most spectacular old mosques surviving in the subcontinent. Begada used local Hindu and Jain artisans to build the mosques. The lattice work on the windows, the column structure in the prayer halls and arches give a great idea of how Islamic architecture in India evolved. The Nagina Mosque on the edge of the site with its open topped cenotaph is particularly brilliant. When Mughal Emperor Humayun sacked the city, several concepts were noted by his advisors. Aspects like the lattices became central concepts of Mughal architecture as evidenced in sites like Fatehpur Sikri. Champaner-Pavagadh has several other interesting sites and local villagers still call it home. The Sat Kaman fortification on the Pavagadh hillside offers a great overview of the site and also great views of the plains of Malwa beyond. The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.

Statue of Unity/Sardar Sarovar Dam

Work on the Sardar Sarovar Dam was begun in 1961 and the dam’s reservoir that fills in a vast area between the Vindhyachal and Satpura ranges only topped out in 2017. The dam is the worlds third-largest concrete dam and the water from the reservoir provides irrigation to vast swathes of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The Statue of Unity of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was announced by Narendra Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2013. It took five years to complete and was inaugurated on October 31, 2018. It is covered by 6,500 unpolished bronze plates that are expected to oxidise over time to give it a ‘green’ look like the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour. The statue at a height of 182 metres (240 meters including plinth) is the tallest in the world and likeness was designed by Ram Sutar. Visitors can travel in high-speed elevators to a height of 135 metres and have commanding views of the dam and reservoir. An estimated 25,000-35,000 visitors visit the statue daily, even though it is two hours drive from Vadodara.

Modhera Sun Temple/Rani Ki Vav

Both these sites were built by the Emperor Bhimdeva, a ruler of the Solanki empire and considered examples of the Golden Age of Gujarati rule in the middle of the 11th century C.E. Even though some historians speculate that both sites were built as penance for the destruction of the Somnath Temple by Mahmud of Ghazni early in Bhimdeva’s rule. The Modhera site also has an archaelogical museum that maintains several of the fallen sculptures of gods from the pantheon as well as other carvings. The signature of the site is it’s unique stepwell with 108 shrines. The Rani Ki Vav as the name suggests was built for (and according to legend, by) the royal consort, Udaymati. It is one of the most spectacular archaeological sites in India and by far, the most stunning example of a stepwell in the country. The walls are adorned with sculptures of the avatars of Vishnu and other Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The site was remarkably preserved and remained untouched by any of the armies that raided the lands over the next 800 years because the Vav was covered by mud and sand in what many believe was a deliberate act. This meant that the site was only discovered after independence and fully excavated only in 1958. Much restoration work is still ongoing and visitors do not have access to the full site. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014 and an image of the Vav features on the reverse of the new Rs 100 note.

Vintage Auto Museum

The Vintage Auto Museum located in a farmhouse on the Ahmedabad ring road is a fascinating collection built up by an avid car collector and cloth merchant Pranlal Bhogilal. He acquired many vehicles from India’s erstwhile princely states after the older Rajas died or when they fell on hard times following the abolition of the privy purses. Even though most of the vehicles might seem in decent condition, but after Bhogilal’s demise, a few years ago, many of the cars are not in a working condition. However it is an amazing collection that any car buff will like and includes some very rare Rolls Royce, including one in the ‘boat tail’ shape, a Hispano-Suiza extended wheelbase hunting vehicle that belonged to the Alwar royal family, several vintage Mercedes and some stunning American vehicles from the 1950’s and 1960’s that Bhogilal personally used and drove.