During my 3ish week stay in Ahmedabad, I wanted to get out and see some other parts of Gujarat. Since most of Gujarat's top places to visit are pretty far from Ahmedabad, I didn't have a ton of options, but there are still a handful of short getaways that make for good day or weekend trips. I went to Modhera, Pathan, and Siddhpur, which a lot of people do all in one day, though I spent two nights in Siddhpur for a weekend getaway. It was an amazing trip and I’d recommend that itinerary whether you do it in a day or spend the night.
We took a bus to Siddhpur from Ahmedabad, which took around 2 hours. The next day we hired a car to go in a triangle to Patan, around 40 minutes away, then Modhera, another 50 minutes, and then back to Siddhpur, another hour or so. The next day we went back to Ahmedabad by train.
Siddhpur
Siddhpur is small town full of beautiful old mansions that belong to the Bohra community, though few are occupied today. The colorful fusion architecture is interesting, charming, and incredibly evocative. (I do not want to explicitly reference it because I find it vaguely embarrassing, but it is hard not to be reminded of the Instagram posts that claim to recreate the style of a certain film director by happenstance despite the people who make such posts not actually understanding that style and probably never having seen any of his movies and… ah forget it). Walking through the old lanes is a total time warp. It feels a bit like a romanticized Old Bombay, with no tall buildings or masses of people or signs of modernity to spoil the illusion (I’m not sure it makes sense architecturally, but Rajamouli used Siddhpur to great effect to portray pre-independence Delhi in RRR). This would be a great place to set a cozy mystery novel. Like all great places, there is a clocktower.
I’m glad I was able to spend the night there because it gave me a chance to see the town around sunset and early in the morning before it got hot and crowded (though the inner lanes are always pretty quiet). Also, I was able to arrange a visit through our Airbnb hosts to go inside one of the old mansions, which was a highlight of our trip. And it was nice to have time to soak into the sleepy rhythms of the town, and to take our time to admire small architectural details like the family insignias on each home.
In addition to the Bohra neighborhoods, there’s the Rudra Mahalaya temple, a Solanki era structure, mostly destroyed but there’s enough left that you get a sense of its former grandeur. No idea if this is true, but the guy there said it was once so tall it could be seen all the way from Patan. When we went it was closed for “communal reasons” (it was repurposed as a mosque by the Gujarat sultanate and is used as both a mosque and a Hindu temple, I guess that wasn’t working out too well and now nobody uses it or visits it), but you still get pretty good views from the gate. I also liked the area surrounding the temple and going down to the river, it has cool temple town architecture. Siddhpur also has what is apparently one of the most sacred tanks in all of Hinduism but this kind of stuff is above my pay grade.
There are a few good sweets and snacks to try in Siddhpur! The most notable is the Bohra special street food Pyali, which is like a potato and brown chickpea chaat in a besan gravy. The stall I got it from only operates from around 9AM to noon (in case that link doesn’t work, this is the same stall). Very good! The stall seemed clean and well ordered too. Another popular street food is a red potato sabzi that you eat with a fried cylindrical puff thing, using that as a utensil while also eating it. I liked this too, though I think you get the same thing all over Gujarat, and it’s probably not worth the gastrointestinal risk.
There’s also a local special lassi at Lalumal Lassiwala, which is like a cross between a lassi and rabdi. I don’t like a lot of sweet things but I liked this! They have other sweets, including another local sweet called magdal, which is like a besan laddoo but less firm and more fudgelike. I liked that too, but it really is just besan laddoo with a different shape and texture. There’s a shop called Chota Kaka Magdal that only sells this, I thought it tasted more or less the same so you don’t need to go, but I respect shops that only sell one thing.
The nicest sweets and snacks shop in Siddhpur is called Royal Nafees, but the location is incorrectly labeled. It was recommended by our Airbnb hosts, and we asked around and people yelled across the street in Gujarati and pointed us in the direction and eventually the owner showed up on his bike and escorted us over. I think the location was somewhere around here, but it’s more fun if you ask around. They gave us a few dozen fried and/or sweet things to taste and wouldn’t let us pay for them and then we bought a few things to be nice. It was all good! Recommended. They have the local special magdal, various similar things, and some Bohra specials like mawa puff and a fried biscuit cracker thing for dunking in tea.
Siddhpur reminded me a bit of the Chettinad region in Tamil Nadu, which is one of my favorite places, but that has turned into a great tourist destination with a handful of tastefully done heritage stays that serve exceptional food you can’t get anywhere else, and you can visit a number of the mansions’ interiors, while Siddhpur has nothing of the sort, despite having similar potential. I am much happier visiting somewhere that isn’t crowded with tourists, but at the same time it is sad to see that the beautiful town is… dying. There were a few old people out chilling on their porches, but for the most part these houses seemed abandoned.
I hope these houses still exist in 50 years, and I think a little marketing and enterprise would make that more likely, rather than their future depending on remittances from family members that have moved on and have little connection with the place as the generations churn. Siddhpur is an awesome place, promote it! When we told our Airbnb hosts we walked around the Bohravads, they seemed surprised that we had any interest in seeing Siddhpur, as if we just came there as a base for visiting Patan and Modhera.
I found an article from 2013 that said the “Sidhpur Smruti Trust was formed with a focus on preserving the rich but neglected architectural and cultural heritage of Sidhpur, making it viable through a heritage tourism plan that includes heritage homestays, heritage walks, spiritual tours and promoting Bohra cuisine and culture.’’ A decade later, it doesn’t look like this amounted to anything, though houses have been restored. I wonder if there’s some hesitance/resistance in the community, at least in some corners, to turn their town into a tourist site, or if it’s just a matter of nobody wanting to be the first mover to invest in it.
There are some good articles on Siddhpur, like this one which also covers another Bohra town with many old houses, but all of the articles touch on somewhat similar material, basic historical knowledge of the Bohras being a trade community that built these mansions but have mostly moved away, information on the mix of architectural styles, stuff like that. I would love to see something that delves deeper into the town’s history and has stories that bring its bygone era to life. There are some books about Siddhpur’s architecture, I found this one which is cheap on Kindle, I haven’t read it but from the preview it seems to have greater historical information. In my free time in Siddhpur I just read up on the Bohra community in general, mostly on Wikipedia and ChatGPT.
Here’s part of a photo series from a famous photographer Sebastian Cortés:
Want to hunt down RRR locations? This video will help.
Also, psylium husk is grown nearby, I noticed a number of factories on the drive into town. See “The Sidhpur” on the awesomely designed Isabgol box. I never used it but apparently it’s been growing in popularity in the U.S., even earning an NYT article, and is especially popular among gay men because… well, this is a family friendly publication so you’ll have to read the article to find out. (What other secrets of the orient do only gay men in the west know, I wonder?)
By the way, we stayed at this Airbnb and I’m glad we did. It isn’t for people who are fussy, it was fairly basic comfort wise, there’s no AC and it was quite hot when we were there, and I think the bed was fairly hard. I was happy with it, though, and it was clean. We were hosted by a friendly elderly Bohra couple (I think the Airbnb host’s parents) who I really enjoyed talking to. They also arranged for us to see one of the old mansions! The house is an old bungalow with a peaceful village vibe away from the rest of the world, and I enjoyed the isolation, but it’s also perfectly located, just a minute walk from the main road. Their maid did the cooking and it’s okay… but probably better than anything any local restaurants have. I did give some food recommendations above, but it’s just snacks.
Patan
Pronounced “paht-un”, or something like that, don’t embarrass yourself by pronouncing it Pathaan like I did. This is the capital of the great Solanki dynasty, which the famous Gujarati historical novel Glory of Patan is about (the first in the trilogy, don’t think it’s meant to be accurate but it sounds fun).
Unfortunately the grand capital was mostly all destroyed, but one building survives, the amazing Rani ki Vav, one of the best stepwells I’ve seen. The scale of it and the level of detail in the carvings are both stunning. Whether it’s worth going out here just to see a stepwell is up to you, but if you think it’s worth it then you won’t be disappointed.
There’s also an old water tank and some old water pipe system you can see, I didn’t bother, though it did look cool. But it was incredibly hot in the afternoon. There were some cool old wooden buildings I saw driving through the town, and some cool gateways. There are probably some hidden gems in Patan that I didn’t see. A lot of people come to see/buy the Patan Patola saris, there’s a famous place that makes them and claims to be the only one that makes the real one, though our driver took us to another one. I don’t really care about this stuff, sorry.
There’s a local special sweet in Patan called Devda. I tried it at a place called Pravin Mithai Ghar. I’m not very fond of sweets in general, and am even less fond of Indian sweets, so I don’t have much to say about this. It was fine I guess, maybe if you like sweets you’ll like it? It was sweet and if I remember correctly a little crispy, and it had ghee, apparently this is enough for people to enjoy it for some reason. Boring to me. Their bhakarwadi was 10/10 though (I asked the guy at the sweet shop if bhakarwadi was Mahashtrian or Gujarati and he seemed thrown off by why one would even ask that question, like of course it is Gujarati). Chivda was good. I guess you should stop here. There’s one other locally famous sweet shop, otherwise I don’t think there’s any noteworthy food in Patan, nor was there anywhere that looked like it had a decent bathroom, no CCD or anything. I didn’t go, but it was recommended by the driver and a shop keeper to stop and eat at Bansi Kathiawadi, a small chain of highway eateries in Gujarat.
Modhera
I believe this Surya temple and the Rani ki Vav in Patan are the two best surviving pieces of Solanki architecture. It’s an amazing temple! Incredibly detailed and beautiful, especially at sunset. The carvings are great. Whether you care to go far out of your way for one temple is up to you, but if that sounds like a good time you won’t be disappointed!
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