The Rajkot Diaries - Day 7

 The days are mixed up a bit but that's ok. Yesterday Jyo, Riaz and I went to visit Dwarka where Lord Krishna set up his kingdom and residence for the Yadava clan. Dwarka has a temple by the sea, the Dwarkadhish temple, which is one of the four dhams established by Sankaracharya. It's about 200 kms from Rajkot. Further ahead from Dwarka is the town Okha which is the farthest point west in terms of rail and road and land connectivity. Okha is now connected with Bet Dwarka, an island on which Lord Krishna resided which is now connected by a brand new cable suspension bridge.

Nilesh bhai, Riaz aand Jyo sipping bhatti chai

Road to Dwarka

Anyway, off we went at 615, thanks to our driver for the day Nilesh (actually he is a fabricator who also moonlights as a driver for reasons best known to him). He got us off on to the highway, not very good at listening and processing, so we would have conversations where we said something and he would say something else. First stop was for chai and he told me that Gujarat or Rajkot was famous for its bhatti chai. I fully agree. Their chai is very nice and he even showed me how they make it.

Dwarkadish temple to the right, Sudama setu across the river

Dwarkadish temple

Then we sped onwards towards Dwarka, past Jamnagar where Reliance has this massive refinery. Jamnagar was what was known as Nawanagar in the past and it was against them that Hyderabad won its first Ranji Trophy title in 1936. Ranjitsinhji or Ranji as he is popularly known was the Jamsaheb of Jamnagar and it had an illustrious line of royal cricketers that had Ajay Jadeja who is the current Jamsaheb from what I read in the papers.. There was a massive jam at the rail crossing which we could not fathom because all one needs to do is have a flyover over the railway crossing but for reasons best known they suffer the jams. Our car stopped for a few minutes which required us to push it to one side. Then luckily it started and we were off.

Camel on the ghat

Nilesh was off his estimate by an hour - he said we would reach Dwarka by 10 am and took us there by 11 am. Apart from the jam the road was good. We could see the temple even as we entered the town, to the left, along the ghats of the Gomti, the Sudama Setu right next to it. Nilesh parked and we walked to the temple complex. Lots of people, this being a Saturday, and we went in, Jyo and I, while Riaz waited outside checking out the merchandise.

A large Shiva statue at Nageshwar (sponsored by Gushan Kumar apparently)

Nageshwar temple

Lots of people were sitting on the floor of the premises, looking up where a man was changing the flag on the top of the temple. We jostled and went past to the little shrines on the left - Satyabhama, Yasoda and others and then to the Shardashram complex of Sankaracharya. Then we joined a long queue which hardly moved for a long time. The temple itself is of grey colour, no ornamentation or coloring unlike the temples of the South which are very colourful. After the darshan we went out, met Riaz and headed back to the car. 

On the Sudarshan setu bridge connecting land to the Bet Dwarka island

Jyo, Riaz and self on Sudarshan setu 

From Dwarka we headed to Nageshwar which was about 30 minutes away. Nageshwar is a jyotirling and we decided to go there on our way. It was a small temple with no restrictions on carrying mobiles and stuff. There is a massive statue of Lord Shiva. Inside there was a silver idol. Jyo and I took those pictures that the photographers take as a ritual and headed out.

Shivrajpur beach

From there to Okha which I had heard about about two months ago while reading Monisha Rajesh's book - the last point on the west. More importantly, Bet Dwaraka is connected to Okha by Sudharshan Setu. However we could not go to the temple as the mandir was shut - being almost 2 in the afternoon we decided  against going in. On second thoughts I feel we could have just taken a quick tour and come back having gone that far. But I guess we were hungrier than we thought.

Nilesh stopped at  a nice restaurant where we ate some fine vegetarian food and headed off to the Shivrajpur beach which has a blue flag certification - a nice, shallow beach that curves in, with a lot of water sports and some shacks on it. We spent some time there, and started back at 4.

Going by our morning experience we knew it would take five hours and it did. If you had asked me if I would ever have gone to Dwarka I don't think I would said I would. And here I am.