Dwarka

Dwarka sits at the western tip of Saurashtra where the Gomti meets the Arabian Sea, and Hindus have come here for centuries as one of the four Char Dham and one of the seven sacred Puris. Krishna is said to have founded his golden city here after leaving Mathura, and marine archaeologists working offshore since the 1980s have raised stone anchors and submerged walls that keep the story alive. The Dwarkadhish temple, the Jagat Mandir, rises five storeys on 72 pillars above the Gomti ghat, its spire carrying a fifty-two-yard flag that is changed five times a day by the family holding the hereditary right; pilgrims book the cloth months in advance.

You enter by the Swarga Dwar, the gate of heaven, and leave by the Moksha Dwar. Mornings mean the mangala aarti before six and a dip at the ghat; evenings mean the sea wall, where the light goes copper and the temple bells carry over the water. Two kilometres away the Rukmini Devi temple stands alone in scrub, and seventeen kilometres north the Nageshwar Jyotirlinga sits beneath a colossal seated Shiva.

Bet Dwarka, the island where Krishna is said to have made his home, is reached by the Sudarshan Setu, the long cable-stayed bridge that opened in 2024 and retired the old ferry.