India Guide
Gujarat
Saurashtra
SAURASHTRA, or the Kathiawar Peninsula, forms the bulk of Gujarat state, a large knob of land spreading south from the hills and marshes of the north out to the Arabian Sea, cut into by the Gulf of Cambay to the east and the Gulf of Kutch to the west. This is Gujarat at its most diverse, populated by cattle-rearing tribes and industrialists, with Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Muslim architecture, modern urban centres and traditional bazaars.
Saurashtra boasts India's finest Jain temple city at Shatrunjaya near Palitana, Krishna temples at Dwarka and Somnath and Ashoka's Buddhist capital, Junagadh. Lions can still be found in the national park in Gir Forest, while in the flat yellow grassland northeast of Bhavnagar, India's largest herd of blackbuck live in a national park at Velavadar. Gandhi's birthplace is still honoured in Porbandar; he is also remembered by a museum in Rajkot, where he lived for some years. The best place to head for sun, sea, beaches and beer is the formerly Portuguese island of Diu, just off the south coast.