City of Ahmedabad

Gujarat's largest city and its long-time commercial heart, Ahmedabad rewards travellers who enjoy peeling back the layers of a place. Founded on the banks of the Sabarmati, its medieval old quarter is a warren of pols, the tightly packed traditional neighbourhoods of carved wooden mansions, hidden courtyards and shared bird-feeders that earned the walled city UNESCO World Heritage status. It is a city of merchants, weavers and reformers, with a character that is industrious, devout and quietly proud.

The sights run from the sacred to the architectural. The Sabarmati Ashram, from where Mahatma Gandhi launched the Salt March, is a place of unexpected calm and a moving introduction to India's freedom struggle. Elsewhere you can admire the delicate stone latticework of the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque, climb the shaking minarets, and visit the Adalaj stepwell on the city's edge, a cool subterranean masterpiece of carved sandstone.

Ahmedabad is rightly famous for textiles, and the Calico Museum holds one of the world's finest collections of Indian fabric. The food is a joy too: vegetarian Gujarati thalis arrive in a parade of small bowls balancing sweet, salty and tangy, while the night market at Manek Chowk turns into a buzzing late-evening street feast.

Guided walks through the pols at dawn capture the city at its most charming, with temple bells, fresh fafda and chai, and shafts of light slipping between timber facades. An afternoon might be spent browsing artisan boutiques or watching the Sabarmati Riverfront come alive at dusk.

We include Ahmedabad as the natural gateway to any Gujarat journey. It distils so much of what makes the state distinctive, heritage, Gandhian history, craft and cuisine, and sets the tone beautifully for the wilder, more remote regions to follow.