A single double-ikat Patola sari can keep a family of Salvi weavers in Patan busy for six months or more, because every thread of both warp and weft is tied and dyed before it reaches the loom. Moments like that, sitting beside a craftsman who learned the work from his father, are what set this Rajasthan and Gujarat tour apart from a standard palace circuit. It is planned for travellers who care about how things are made: block prints, mirror embroidery, carved stone, lacquer, bells and pottery, seen in the workshops and villages where they still come from.
The first week follows a familiar line through Rajasthan, from the hill fort of Amber in Jaipur to the lake palaces of Udaipur and the marble Jain temples of Mount Abu. Then the road crosses into Gujarat, a state that many visitors to western India never reach. Payless Tours India gives Ahmedabad, India's first UNESCO World Heritage City, three full days, including the early-morning walk through its gated pols and a visit to Gandhi's riverside ashram. After that come the Solanki-era stepwell at Patan, the Sun Temple at Modhera and, finally, the Great Rann of Kutch, where the ground turns white with salt each winter.
The best time for this Rajasthan and Gujarat tour is November to February, which matches the Rann Utsav season, when a tent city opens at Dhordo and the salt flats are dry enough to walk on; exact Rann Utsav dates are announced each year by Gujarat Tourism. The tour starts in Delhi, travels by road throughout in a private car, and ends in Ahmedabad, so you can fly home from there or connect via Mumbai or Delhi. Gujarat is a dry state, and your hotel can explain the liquor permit rules for foreign visitors if needed.
Each day below has space for a destination photo. Days without an image simply show the description full-width — clean and consistent either way.
On arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport, a Payless Tours India representative meets you outside the terminal with a name sign and drives you to your hotel, a trip of roughly forty-five minutes. Because many long-haul flights land late at night or in the early hours, we can book the room from the night before so you can rest without waiting for check-in time. The morning and early afternoon are left completely free. After a long flight it helps to sleep, eat something light and get used to the time difference before the road journey starts tomorrow, as this tour covers a lot of ground over the next two and a half weeks.
In the late afternoon your driver takes you to Dilli Haat in the INA area, an open-air market run by the Delhi Tourism department that suits the theme of this trip well. Stalls rotate every fortnight among craftspeople from different Indian states, so on one visit you might find Kashmiri papier-mâché, Odisha palm-leaf paintings, Bengal kantha quilts and Rajasthani puppets in a single row. It is a useful first lesson in the range of Indian handicrafts, and it gives you a sense of prices before you meet the makers themselves in Rajasthan and Gujarat. A small entry ticket is charged at the gate.
Dilli Haat also has a row of food stalls, each serving the cooking of one state, from Assamese thalis and Naga pork to Bengali fish curry and Maharashtrian vada pav, which makes it a simple place for a first Indian dinner. Portions are small, so you can try several dishes and share them. Your driver waits nearby and brings you back to the hotel afterwards, where you will receive a printed itinerary with the contact numbers of your driver and the Payless Tours India office. Please mention any food allergies or medical needs now so that we can share them with the hotels and guides along the way. Overnight in Delhi.
You leave after breakfast for Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, on National Highway 48. The first hour runs through the glass towers of Gurugram before the city thins out into the farmland of southern Haryana. Your driver will stop for tea about halfway at a highway restaurant with clean toilets, and lunch is usually taken at a roadside dhaba where you can try dal makhani, fresh tandoori roti and buttermilk. The total drive takes five to six hours depending on traffic, and the private car stays with you all the way to Ahmedabad, so you can keep shopping bags and fragile purchases in it safely as the trip goes on.
After crossing into Rajasthan, the land becomes drier and stonier, and the Aravalli hills rise on both sides of the highway. In the cooler months you see camel carts on the service roads, herds of goats crossing between fields, and the ruins of small forts on the hilltops. Jaipur's outskirts begin around Chandwaji, and you enter the city through its newer suburbs before reaching your hotel in the middle of the afternoon. Jaipur was founded in 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, a ruler with a strong interest in astronomy and town planning, and his streets were laid out on a grid with wide bazaars.
Once you have checked in and rested, your driver takes you to the old walled city, where the facades were painted terracotta pink in 1876 for the visit of the Prince of Wales. As the light fades, walk through Bapu Bazaar and Nehru Bazaar, two arcaded market streets known for mojari slippers, cotton quilts and tie-dyed bandhani scarves. Nearby Kishanpole Bazaar has shops selling brass utensils and puppets. Most shops close by about half past eight, and traders expect friendly bargaining here. If you would rather keep the evening quiet, ask for the drive past the floodlit Albert Hall Museum before dinner. Overnight in Jaipur.
Your Jaipur guide meets you at eight o'clock for the drive to Amber Fort, eleven kilometres north of the city. The capital of the Kachhwaha rulers from the sixteenth century until 1727, it sits on a ridge above Maota Lake with long walls running across the surrounding hills. You go up by jeep and walk through four courtyards, each built in a different period. Your guide points out the fine fresco work above the Ganesh Pol gate, painted with natural pigments, and the Sheesh Mahal, where convex mirror pieces set into plaster send light around the room. From the ramparts you look down over the old town of Amer.
A few minutes' walk below the fort, in the lanes of Amer town, is the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing, housed in a restored haveli. It explains how the block-printed cotton of the Jaipur region is made, from the carving of teak blocks to mixing natural dyes, and a printer often demonstrates the work by hand. Visitors can usually try printing a small piece of fabric. This sets up the textile thread of the trip, which runs all the way to Ajrakhpur in Kutch. The museum is closed on Mondays, and on those days your guide arranges a visit to a blue pottery workshop instead.
After lunch you enter the walled city for the City Palace, where the former royal family still lives in the seven-storey Chandra Mahal. Your guide takes you through the textile gallery of the Mubarak Mahal, with royal robes, pashmina shawls and a huge gown made for Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh I, who was said to be more than two metres tall. Next door, the stone instruments of the Jantar Mantar observatory, a UNESCO site, still measure the time and the movement of stars. You finish across the road at Hawa Mahal, with its pink honeycomb front of tiny windows. Overnight in Jaipur.
This is the longest drive in Rajasthan on this tour, so you leave soon after breakfast. The route follows the main highway through Kishangarh, a centre of the marble trade, and past Ajmer and Bhilwara, a textile town known for its large spinning mills, before skirting Chittorgarh and turning south-west into the hills of Mewar. The road is a four-lane expressway for most of the way, and the driver plans stops every two hours. Lunch is at a highway restaurant near Bhilwara or Chittorgarh, where Rajasthani dishes such as gatte ki sabzi and ker sangri are often on the menu.
As you enter Mewar, the country changes from flat farmland to rolling green hills dotted with reservoirs and small temples. This region was ruled for more than a thousand years by the Sisodia family, who were proud that they never gave a daughter in marriage to the Mughal emperors. Your driver can tell you about Maharana Pratap, the sixteenth-century ruler who fought Akbar's army at Haldighati, not far north of Udaipur, and who is still honoured with statues across the region. You may notice his image painted on trucks and on the walls of roadside shops as you drive through the area.
You reach Udaipur in the late afternoon and check in at a hotel close to the old city. Udaipur was founded in 1559 by Maharana Udai Singh II as a new capital after the fall of Chittorgarh, and it grew around a series of man-made lakes. After a rest, walk down to Gangaur Ghat beside Bagore ki Haveli and watch the evening light on Lake Pichola. If you have energy for one more stop, the Dharohar folk dance show inside the haveli starts at seven o'clock and includes puppet acts and the bhavai pot-balancing dance. Overnight in Udaipur.
After breakfast your guide leads you into the City Palace, a long complex of white and cream buildings on the eastern bank of Lake Pichola, built and extended by successive Maharanas over about three hundred years. The museum route passes through narrow passages and steep stairways designed to slow down attackers, into courtyards decorated with coloured glass and painted tiles. Look for the Mor Chowk, with its three peacocks made of glass mosaic, and the Zenana Mahal, the queens' quarters, which now displays palanquins and royal portraits. From the upper balconies you can see the Lake Palace hotel sitting on its own island in the water.
From the palace you walk into the old city lanes to a miniature painting studio, where artists still use squirrel-hair brushes and colours ground from stones and minerals. Mewar painting grew up in the royal workshops of Udaipur in the seventeenth century, with scenes from the life of Krishna, court ceremonies and hunting trips painted in fine detail. The artist will show you how a single eyelash is painted with one hair of the brush and how gold is burnished with an agate stone. There is no pressure to buy, but if you want a painting, ask your guide about fair prices first.
Late in the afternoon you board a boat on Lake Pichola for an hour on the water. The boat passes the bathing ghats and old havelis of the eastern shore and goes around Jag Niwas, the Lake Palace, built in the 1740s as a royal summer retreat and now a hotel. It then stops at Jag Mandir, a second island palace with marble elephants at its landing steps, where you can walk in the garden and the courtyard. As the sun sets behind the hills, the walls of the City Palace turn golden and then orange. Dinner is at leisure in the old city. Overnight in Udaipur.
This morning focuses on rural crafts. Shilpgram, three kilometres west of Fateh Sagar Lake, is a seventy-acre village museum run by the West Zone Cultural Centre, with traditional houses brought from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Maharashtra. Among them are mud huts from Kutch that give you a first look at the round bhunga houses you will see in the Rann at the end of the tour. Potters, weavers and musicians often work in the courtyards, and each December the centre hosts the Shilpgram Utsav, a ten-day crafts fair that brings in artisans from across western India.
After lunch you drive twenty-two kilometres north into the hills to Eklingji, a complex of 108 temples enclosed by high walls and dedicated to Lord Shiva. The rulers of Mewar have long treated Eklingji as the true king of the state and themselves as his regents, and the present temple dates largely from the fifteenth century. Photography is not permitted inside, and the temple keeps set worship hours, so your guide will plan the timing. The main idol is a four-faced black marble image of Shiva, and the priests chant during the afternoon aarti.
A short drive away, beside the lake at Nagda, stand the Saas-Bahu temples, two tenth-century shrines dedicated to Vishnu. The name means mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, a local nickname that probably comes from Sahastrabahu, an old name for Vishnu meaning the one with a thousand arms. Their carved ceilings, figures of dancers and pillars are worth a slow look, as you will see the same careful stonework later at Modhera and Patan, built by craftsmen of the same western Indian school. You return to Udaipur by late afternoon for a final evening by the lakes. Overnight in Udaipur.
Leaving Udaipur after breakfast, you head south-west through the green Aravalli valleys towards the Gujarat border. The road passes through the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, where Bhil and Garasia villages sit among maize fields and small reservoirs. At Abu Road, the car turns uphill for the winding climb to Mount Abu, which sits at about 1,200 metres on a granite plateau. The road runs through a forested wildlife sanctuary that is home to sloth bears, langurs and many birds. Your hotel is close to the centre of town, and you arrive in time for a late lunch.
Your local guide takes you to the Dilwara temples in the afternoon, as visitors who are not Jain are admitted only from midday onwards. There are five temples in the group, built between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries by ministers and merchants who served the Solanki and Vaghela rulers of Gujarat. The oldest, Vimal Vasahi, was built in 1031 for Lord Adinath; the later Luna Vasahi is famous for a ceiling carved into a hanging lotus. Many of the same Solanki craftsmen worked at Patan and Modhera, which you will see later. Phones and cameras must be left outside, and dress should cover shoulders and knees.
In the evening, walk along the edge of Nakki Lake, the small green lake around which the town grew as a summer retreat for British officials and Rajput princes in the nineteenth century. Benches line the promenade, and pedal boats can be hired if you want to go out on the water. Toad Rock, a boulder shaped like a frog, is visible on the hill above the lake. Mount Abu is several degrees cooler than the plains, so in December and January bring a warm layer for the evening. Street stalls near the lake sell roasted corn and hot tea. Overnight in Mount Abu.
After breakfast you drive down the mountain and cross into Gujarat soon after Abu Road, passing the town of Palanpur, once the seat of a Nawab family and now known for the diamond business run by many of its families in Mumbai and Antwerp. The highway is fast and in good condition. Gujarat's roadside restaurants serve a different kind of food from Rajasthan, so this is a good moment to try a Gujarati thali, with its sweet-and-sour dal, kadhi made from yoghurt, thepla flatbreads and small bowls of seasonal vegetables. Your driver will suggest a clean restaurant on the highway near Mehsana.
You reach Ahmedabad by early afternoon. The city was founded in 1411 by Sultan Ahmed Shah on the east bank of the Sabarmati River and grew into one of the richest trading centres of western India, known for its textiles and its merchant families. In 2017 the old walled city became India's first UNESCO World Heritage City, recognised for its Indo-Islamic monuments and its wooden house fronts. Today Ahmedabad is a large industrial city with seven million people, but its old quarter keeps a way of life organised around neighbourhood gates, temples and shared courtyards.
After a rest at the hotel, your driver takes you to the Sabarmati Riverfront, a paved promenade that runs along both banks of the river. A walk there in the evening is popular with local families, and you can see the Atal footbridge, opened in 2022, lit up after dark. Later, food lovers can head to Manek Chowk, a square in the old city that is a jewellery market by day and turns into an open-air food market at night, with stalls selling pav bhaji, sandwiches with chutney and the local chocolate sandwich. Bring a small amount of cash. Overnight in Ahmedabad.
The day starts early with the Ahmedabad heritage walk, which begins at about eight o'clock at the Swaminarayan Temple in Kalupur, built in 1822. Over the next two and a half hours your guide leads you through the pols, gated residential lanes where families of the same caste or trade have lived together for generations. You see carved wooden house fronts, small Jain and Hindu shrines and the chabutro, a tall painted bird feeder that stands in the middle of many pols. Your guide shows you the khadki side gates and the narrow secret passages that once let residents escape during riots.
The walk ends at the Jama Masjid, finished in 1424 by Sultan Ahmed Shah with 260 pillars holding up its prayer hall. Along the way, the guide explains how Hindu, Jain and Muslim builders worked together on the city's monuments, which is why Islamic arches stand beside carvings that look like those in temples. After a late breakfast or early lunch in the old city, there is a short stop at the Teen Darwaza, a triple gateway from the fifteenth century, and the Bhadra Fort nearby. The streets around here are full of fabric shops selling bandhani and kites, especially in the weeks before the January Uttarayan kite festival.
In the afternoon you drive to the Sabarmati Ashram on the west bank of the river, where Mahatma Gandhi lived from 1917 to 1930. It was from here that he set out on 12 March 1930 with seventy-eight followers on the Salt March to Dandi, a protest against the British salt tax. You see Hriday Kunj, the simple cottage where Gandhi and his wife Kasturba lived, with his spinning wheel and writing desk, and a museum building designed by the architect Charles Correa. Many visitors find the quiet riverside garden a good place to sit for a while. Overnight in Ahmedabad.
After breakfast your guide takes you to the Dada Hari ni Vav in the Asarwa area, a five-storey stepwell built in 1499 by Bai Harir Sultani, a lady of the court of Sultan Mahmud Begada. Fewer visitors come here than to Adalaj, which makes it an easier place to look at the carvings in peace. Steps lead down through a series of pillared landings to the water at the bottom, and the air grows noticeably cooler as you go down. Your guide explains how stepwells served as places for travellers to rest, for women to gather, and for storing water through the long dry season.
Next is the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque, built in 1573 near Lal Darwaza, whose carved stone window has become a symbol of Ahmedabad and appears in the logo of the Indian Institute of Management. The screen shows the branches of an intertwined tree carved into a single piece of yellow sandstone, and the morning light through it makes a good photograph. The mosque is still used for prayer, so your guide will tell you when it is suitable to visit. From there, lunch can be taken at one of the old restaurants serving Gujarati thalis in the Lal Darwaza area.
In the afternoon you drive to Sarkhej Roza, eight kilometres south-west of the city, a complex of tombs, a mosque, a palace and a large stepped tank built in the fifteenth century around the grave of the Sufi saint Ahmed Khattu Ganj Baksh. The architect Le Corbusier is said to have compared its design to the Acropolis of Athens. Its plain stone pillars and wide open courtyards are quiet in the late afternoon, and it is a peaceful place to sit by the tank as the sun goes down. Back in town, the evening is free for packing before you leave Ahmedabad. Overnight in Ahmedabad.
You check out after breakfast and drive twenty kilometres north to the Adalaj stepwell, begun in 1498 by Rana Veer Singh of the Vaghela dynasty and completed by Sultan Mahmud Begada after the Rana's death. According to local legend, his widow Rani Rudabai agreed to marry the Sultan only if he finished the well, and then took her own life once it was done. Five storeys deep, it is carved with elephants, flowers and small scenes of daily life. The octagonal opening at the bottom lets light fall onto the water, and the deepest level stays cool even in summer.
The road continues north through the farmland of Mehsana district to Modhera, about a hundred kilometres away. The Sun Temple here was built in 1026–27 by King Bhima I of the Solanki dynasty and stands near the Pushpavati River. It is laid out on an east–west line so that at the equinox the rising sun once fell on the image of Surya in the inner shrine. In front of the temple lies the Surya Kund, a large stepped tank lined with 108 small shrines. Each January, a classical dance festival is held here, with the lit temple as a backdrop. No worship takes place today.
From Modhera it is a short drive of thirty-five kilometres to Patan, which you reach by late afternoon. Patan was the capital of Gujarat from 746 until 1304 under the Chavda, Solanki and Vaghela dynasties, and at its height it was among the largest cities in India. Today it is a small, busy market town, and hotels here are simple but clean and comfortable. If you arrive in time, take a short walk through the old bazaar, where shops sell devda, a local sweet made of fried dough soaked in sugar syrup. Your guide for the next day will meet you in the evening. Overnight in Patan.
Today is a long road day, so you leave soon after breakfast. The route heads west through Radhanpur and Santalpur, along the southern edge of the Little Rann of Kutch, a huge salt marsh that is home to the Indian wild ass, found nowhere else in the world. From the road you may see the flat salt pans where the Agariya community has harvested salt by hand for generations, raking brine in rectangular plots during the dry months. Your driver can stop for a short break near the salt works so you can look at the shining white heaps beside the highway.
Beyond Santalpur, the highway crosses the bridge at Surajbari, the narrow neck of land that links mainland Gujarat to the Kutch region, which was a separate princely state until 1948. The land on the far side feels quite different: drier, with thorn scrub, salt flats and small villages of round mud houses. Herders from the Rabari and Jat communities move their camels and cattle across the open land. Lunch is taken at a highway restaurant near Samakhiali, and the drive then turns north-west towards Bhuj, the main town of Kutch, which sits under the low hill of Bhujiyo Dungar.
You arrive in Bhuj by late afternoon and check in at your hotel for the first two of your three nights in Bhuj. The town was badly damaged by the earthquake of 26 January 2001, which killed some twelve thousand people in Kutch, and much of it has since been rebuilt. In the evening, walk around Hamirsar Lake, a sixteenth-century reservoir in the centre of town, where families stroll along the embankment at dusk. Your guide will also explain the permit arrangements for the White Rann in two days' time and ask for copies of your passport and visa pages. Overnight in Bhuj.
In the morning you visit Rani ki Vav, the queen's stepwell, built around 1063 by Queen Udayamati in memory of her husband King Bhima I. For centuries it lay buried under silt from floods of the Saraswati River, and it was excavated and restored by the Archaeological Survey of India only in the 1980s. That burial kept its carvings in very good condition. Seven levels of terraces lead down to the water, with more than 500 main sculptures of Vishnu's avatars, goddesses and dancers. Since 2014 it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its image appears on the Indian hundred-rupee note.
Your guide then takes you to a Salvi family workshop to see Patola weaving. The family traces its craft back to the twelfth century, when King Kumarapala is said to have invited Salvi weavers to settle in Patan. In this double-ikat method, each thread is tied and dyed in pattern before weaving, and the warp and weft must line up exactly on the loom. A single sari can take two weavers from four months to over a year. Many visitors also stop at the Patan Patola Heritage Museum, which displays examples from different regions and explains the process using samples.
After lunch, you visit Sahastralinga Talav, a large water tank built by King Siddharaj Jaisinh in the eleventh century and once ringed by a thousand small Shiva shrines. Only parts of its canal, steps and stone base remain, but the site helps you picture the scale of the old Solanki capital. Your guide can also take you to one of the Jain temples of the town; Patan has more than a hundred, and the Panchasara Parshvanath temple is the most important. Before returning to your hotel, buy some devda or other local sweets for the long road to Kutch tomorrow. Overnight in Patan.
Your Kutch guide meets you after breakfast for a tour of the old palace area. Aina Mahal, the Mirror Palace, was built in the eighteenth century for Rao Lakhpatji by a local craftsman named Ramsinh Malam, who had learned glass making and clock making in Europe. Its rooms are decorated with Venetian glass, mirrors and painted tiles, with a pleasure hall lined with fountains. Next door is Prag Mahal, built in the 1870s in Italian Gothic style, with a clock tower that you can climb for a view of the town. Parts of both palaces were damaged in 2001 and are still under repair.
You then visit the Kutch Museum, founded in 1877 and the oldest museum in Gujarat, which has collections of Kutchi embroidery, silver work, weapons and inscriptions in the local Kutchi script. For a quieter half hour, your guide can take you to the Smritivan memorial on Bhujiyo Hill, opened in 2022 in memory of those who died in the earthquake, with a museum that explains how the quake struck and how the region was rebuilt. Lunch is at a restaurant in town where you can try Kutchi dabeli, a spicy potato bun invented in the town of Mandvi.
In the afternoon you drive forty kilometres north-west to Nirona, a village known for three rare crafts. A Khatri family here keeps rogan painting alive, using a thick paste of castor oil and natural colours drawn onto cloth with a metal stick, without any brush ever touching the fabric. In another lane, Lohar families make copper-coated iron bells in many sizes, each tuned by hammering, and lacquer workers turn wooden spoons and toys on hand lathes, colouring them with sticks of coloured lac. You return to Bhuj by early evening. Overnight in Bhuj.
You check out after a leisurely breakfast and drive north towards the Great Rann of Kutch, a seasonal salt desert covering about 7,500 square kilometres. The road passes through the grasslands of Banni, known for its herds of Banni buffalo and large flocks of migrating birds in winter. At Bhirandiyara, the checkpoint village where the White Rann permit is verified, you stop to taste mawa, a soft sweet made from slow-cooked milk and sugar, which this village has become famous for. Your guide will have arranged the permit online or will complete it here with your passport details.
Next you visit Hodka and the neighbouring village of Ludiya, home to Meghwal, Halepotra and other communities who live in bhungas, round houses of mud and thatch that are strong enough to survive earthquakes. Many bhungas are painted inside with white clay and set with small mirrors. The women of these villages are known for their fine embroidery, with tiny mirror work and bright thread in patterns that differ from one community to another, and the men work in leather and woodwork. You can buy directly from the artisans, and your guide will help with the conversation.
In the afternoon you check in at a tent camp or bhunga resort near Dhordo, the village closest to the White Rann viewing area. During Rann Utsav, which generally runs from November to February with dates announced by Gujarat Tourism each year, a large tent city operates here with cultural programmes. About an hour before sunset you drive to the edge of the salt flats and walk out onto the white crust, which stretches flat to the horizon. As the sun sets, the white surface turns pink and then grey. On full-moon nights, the salt reflects the moonlight. Overnight at Dhordo.
Early risers can return to the White Rann at dawn, when the salt flats are silent and the first light turns the surface a soft blue before it becomes bright white. After breakfast at the camp, you drive to Kala Dungar, the Black Hill, which at about 460 metres is the highest point in Kutch. From the top you can see across the Great Rann towards the border area on a clear day. At the summit stands the four-hundred-year-old Dattatreya temple, where priests still offer prasad each noon to the jackals who come down from the hill, a custom linked to a local legend about a hungry jackal.
On the way back you stop in Khavda, a small town known for its pottery made by the Kumbhar community. Women paint the clay pots with geometric patterns using fine brushes and natural earth colours before they are fired, and the men work at the wheel. You can watch the whole process in a home workshop and buy small pieces that pack easily. Khavda also has a few shops selling embroidered textiles and leather goods from the surrounding villages. Lunch can be taken at a simple local restaurant, or your camp may be able to pack a meal.
In the afternoon you drive back through the Banni grasslands to Bhuj. In winter, keep an eye on the wetlands near the road, where cranes, flamingos and pelicans often gather. You reach Bhuj in the middle of the afternoon, and the rest of the day is free to rest or do some final shopping. The Bhuj market around Vaniyawad and Shroff Bazaar sells bandhani tie-dye fabric, embroidered cushion covers and silver jewellery from Kutchi craftsmen. Pack fragile purchases carefully, as tomorrow is another long day on the road. Overnight in Bhuj.
After breakfast you check out and head east on the Ahmedabad highway. The first stop, only eight kilometres out of Bhuj, is Bhujodi, a weaving village of the Vankar community. Here pit looms are used to weave shawls and blankets from local sheep and camel wool, often with extra-weft patterns taken from the embroidery of Rabari women. Families invite visitors into their workshops, and some have won national awards for their work. Nearby, the Living and Learning Design Centre museum run by the Shrujan trust is worth a visit if you have time, with displays on the embroidery of many Kutchi communities.
A few kilometres further along is Ajrakhpur, a village founded by Khatri block-printing families who moved here after the 2001 earthquake damaged their old home in Dhamadka. Ajrakh is a resist block print in deep indigo and madder red, made by a process of up to sixteen stages of printing, washing and dyeing with natural colours. A master printer will show you the carved wooden blocks, the clay resist paste and the indigo vats, and explain how many days each piece takes. This last workshop ties together the textile story that began in Jaipur on the third day of the tour.
From Ajrakhpur the drive to Ahmedabad takes five to six hours through Bhachau, across the Surajbari bridge and on through the flat plains of central Gujarat. Lunch is at a highway restaurant along the way, and your driver will stop for tea in the late afternoon. You reach Ahmedabad by early evening and check in at your hotel close to the airport road, ready for your departure. If you have energy, the hotel can arrange a farewell Gujarati thali dinner at one of the city's well-known restaurants as a final meal of the Rajasthan and Gujarat tour. Overnight in Ahmedabad.
After breakfast and check-out, your driver takes you to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad in good time for your flight home or your connection via Mumbai or Delhi. If your flight leaves late, the morning is free, and a late check-out can be requested at extra cost. Our services end at the airport, and the whole team at Payless Tours India wishes you a safe flight home.
Share your details and our travel experts will write back with a tailored itinerary and quote - usually within 24 hours, with no obligation.
Share your query and our team will write back in the shortest possible time with every detail you need.
Tell us when and how you like to travel. We'll send a tailored itinerary within 24 hours - no obligation.
Plan my trip free