Wandering Through Gujarat’s Quiet Suburbs and Endless Coastlines

This was an accidental discovery of the beauties of Gujarat.

My sister is a KV teacher and has been posted in Jamnagar, Gujarat since 2 years. She has a baby boy, my nephew Shaivik, who blessed all our lives 1 year ago. As he is a toddler as of now, he needs extra care and supervision. Her husband had to leave as he is employed in Delhi, and I was to stay for 10 days until more (real) help arrived in the form of Shaivik's grandmother.

Now, I was always under the impression that Gujarat doesn't have much to offer when it comes to travel and given the lack of my adventures in the year, I considered going a couple of days before my brother-in-law leave, so that I could have a couple of days to rent a motorcycle and be on my way to the coast.

Apparently, there was only one car and bike rental service in Jamnagar unlike any other more popular travel destinations and they did not offer motorcycles beyond the city limits. So, I had to curb the bike rider in me and go ahead with a rental car. It was a perfectly well maintained Baleno Automatic 2024.

I was never a fan of the Baleno as the build quality of Suzukis has always had a bad reputation, but given the lack of options I went ahead, and ended up falling in love with the machine by the end of the trip. Its a smooth AMT transmission and the suspension of the car surprised me. Here are a couple of pictures of the car that I drove for 650 kms in total:

The journey began at noon on the 17th of December, 2025. 

After taking the car from the guy who came to deliver it, first stop was the petrol pump. Having a full tank and the excitement of a solo car road trip, I turned the music on and to my surprise it sounded way better than a car with stock music equipment. The destination was Porbandar, as I wanted to cover whatever was in the city before I headed to the beach for the sunset.

On the first pit stop, I opened the boot to uncover what my brain already suspected. There it was, a solid bass tube, which meant the car had external speakers and woofers installed, no wonder the great music quality. I couldn't have asked for anything more. 

Now adhering to the golden rule of every road trip, 

"When taking a Pit Stop, If you have time, drink chai.
If you don’t, grab a red bull."

Given how I was rushing to see the ocean for the first time in my life, one would think that I took a pass on the chai? No.

I am that hardcore sucker for chai that sips twice the amount of chai in the same time that a normal person takes to finish one cup of chai. That doesn't mean I skipped the red bull or monster in this case as it was the only option available.

Coming to food options, Gujarat seems to lack all famous food chain outlets like Burger King, Haldirams, etc. I believe that's on purpose, to promote local food businesses more. However, I didn't find any good local restaurants on my drive from Jamnagar to Porbandar either or maybe I just wasn't looking for food as I wasn't particularly hungry.

Here are some of the pictures I clicked on the way to Porbandar: 

Found this beautiful stretch where the trees were completely covering the road as though making a tunnel. Just had to get down and click a picture from the centre of the road. 
Reached Porbandar just in time to check-in to the hotel, dump my luggage and visit the Kirti Temple which had preserved the house where Mahatma Gandhi was born and brought up. Not much to see there, its a quick wrap up. 

Windmills