Gujarat boasts a distinctive Indo-Muslim culture, at its most striking in the modern capital Ahmedabad, where elaborately carved mosques and shrines huddle in the packed streets of the old city. Vibrant handicrafts traditions and some superbly atmospheric Jain and Hindu temples form the focus of forays further afield. Big cats tend to be high on the gendas of most visitors to this region, thanks to the Sasan Gir Sanctuary in the Saurashtra region of Gujurat – the last stronghold of the Asiatic lion. Tradition and modernity combine in a vibrant, dynamic fashion in Gujarat. Well-educated and entrepreneurial, the state’s inhabitants have made their homeland among the wealthiest and most developed in India. The modern world, however, as made little impact on the region’s fringes, where age-old pastoralist and farming ways of life endure.
