Gujarat Tours & Experiences

Things to do in Gujarat

Look for lions in Gir

Gujarat Tourism calls the Gir forest the Asiatic lion's last refuge, and the sanctuary is entered only on a safari permit booked online. When its slots are full, Devalia Safari Park near Sasan shows a fenced cross-section of Gir's wildlife. Our private Gir lion safari plans a pre-dawn and a late-afternoon drive with a naturalist; more is on our Gir National Park tours and experiences page.

Watch the sun set on the White Rann

After the monsoon, the salt marsh at Dhordo dries into a white crust, and in winter the Gujarat Tourism Board's Rann Utsav tent city stands beside it, with folk music, dance and craft stalls; going onto the salt needs a permit. Our Rann Utsav experience arranges a tent, a private guide and a vehicle, and times the flat for sunset. Kutch has its own Rann of Kutch page.

Walk Ahmedabad's old city

Ahmedabad's walled city is a World Heritage Site, and its pols, self-contained neighbourhoods of lanes, squares, wells and bird-feeders, are best seen on foot. The morning heritage walk run with the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation covers about 2 km from the Swaminarayan Temple in Kalupur to the 15th-century Jama Masjid; a night walk starts at the Sidi Saiyad Mosque. After dark, Manek Chowk turns into a street-food market. Our Ahmedabad travel guide has the rest of the city.

Dance garba at Navratri

For nine nights from the start of the bright half of Ashwin, near the end of the rains, Gujarat dances garba in circles round a small shrine to the goddess. Vadodara and Ahmedabad are the most sought-after places to join in, and Gujarat Tourism suggests a village garba too.

Fly kites at Uttarayan

On 14 January kites fill the skies over Gujarat's cities from before dawn, as families on the rooftops try to cut each other's strings. Ahmedabad's Patang Bazaar sells kites in the weeks before, the International Kite Festival centres on the Sabarmati Riverfront, and undhiyu is the dish of the day.

Descend Rani ki Vav at Patan

Queen Udayamati's stepwell, begun in 1063, steps down through carved levels with more than 800 sculptures, most of them Vishnu's avatars, and has been a World Heritage Site since 2014. An evening projection show now lights it after sunset.

Watch birds at Nalsarovar

Nalsarovar, a Ramsar wetland about an hour's drive from Ahmedabad, has recorded more than 250 bird species, pelicans and flamingos among them, and is at its best from November to February.

See wild asses in the Little Rann

The last herds of the Indian wild ass graze the Little Rann, about 103 km from Ahmedabad, where the sanctuary also shelters blackbuck and chinkara; visitors are let in between sunrise and sunset from mid-October to mid-June.

Visit Somnath and Dwarka

On the Saurashtra coast, Somnath's temple is held to be where the first of the twelve jyotirlingas appeared, and a sound-and-light show plays there each evening. Our Dwarka and Somnath travel guide covers both pilgrim towns.

Choosing between our tours and experiences

We run two experiences in Gujarat. The Gir lion safari is for wildlife: a private naturalist, a vehicle and driver, two drives a day and Devalia as the fallback; Gir has no wild tigers, so a tiger needs a separate park. Rann Utsav is for landscape and culture: two or three days in a tent near Dhordo, built around the salt at sunset or, when dates allow, a full moon. Kutch is far from the rest of the state, so pair it with Ahmedabad and Gir. Tour packages staying in Gujarat would appear here under their own heading; the experiences alone are under wildlife safaris in Gujarat and festivals in Gujarat.

When to go for these

The Gir sanctuary's safaris run from 16 October to 15 June, best from November to March, while Devalia stays open through the monsoon except on Wednesdays. Rann Utsav fills the winter on dates the state announces each season, and the wetland birds are thickest from November to February. IMD's averages for Ahmedabad show why: January afternoons of about 28°C, May afternoons of almost 42°C, and about 95 per cent of the year's rain in the June to September monsoon.

Planning tips

Book Gir permits only on the Forest Department's own site, which warns against look-alikes selling them at a premium; every visitor is named with an ID, and the original, a passport for foreign visitors, is checked when you report. The White Rann permit comes from the Kutch Collector's online portal, for Indian nationals, or the Bhirandiyara checkpost. Ahmedabad to Bhuj is about seven hours by road, so a private car and driver helps. Background is in our Gujarat travel guide.