We shot past Silvassa and Vapi and continued on until we reached Vadodara, and my first impression of the city was of the old meeting the new. Vadodara is a city where a shiny, contemporary glass building can co-exist 50 feet away from a temple built in the 1800s with neither looking out of place. We saw one such example as soon as we entered the city. There was this massive, ancient gate at the beginning of the city proper, and the traffic was flowing through it seamlessly, completely unperturbed by this monolith spread across their paths.
As we neared our hotel, I caught sight of a huge stone structure by the wayside, completely enclosed in its own yard, with the main door thrown wide open. Deciding on a whim, I turned the Santa Fe around and headed towards that structure. It turned out that tucked away in the hustle and bustle of central Vadodara is an ancient temple built in the architectural template of the Maratha empire. As I stood there, looking at the Kirti Temple and waiting for the car to be photographed, a measure of peace stole over me. It was as if I had found an oasis of silence in the dissonance of Vadodara. The temple itself was shut at that time, but if you do get an opportunity to visit, time your visits so that you can explore the whole complex from the inside. The marble work on the interior is a sight to behold.
Even our hotel, the Ginger, along with its neighbouring building was a testimony to Vadodara’s unique dichotomy: a luxuriant, lustrous building standing next to a Victorian style church that had a unique feature of its own too. The signboard hanging outside the church was written in Gujarati rather than the traditional English you would expect, as good an advert for ‘Incredible India’ as any I think. After a comfortable kip at the hotel, it was up again early in the morning and off to explore the city. Our first stop was the Sursagar Lake at the centre of which stands a truly gigantic statue of the Lord Shiva. Next on the agenda was another of those gates that populate the city’s roads, this time without the chaotic traffic buzzing around us. We also took a quick stop outside the (closed) gates of Laxmi Vilas Palace, a glorious building that is another must-visit spot in Vadodara. Sadly, we couldn’t wait for the gates to open because we had lots of kilometres to cover – next on our travel check-list was the lion habitat. That’s Sasan Gir forest reserve for those who hadn’t figured it out already, and to say that I was looking forward to it was the understatement of the day.
