Not exactly on any tourist maps. No yoga cafés. No mountain views. Not even a proper hotel (We stayed just out of town at a highway stopover.). Sadly the sea coast silted up and the sea is 10 kilometres in the distance, but they still have a seaside promenade. Many ancient British buildings. And we were taken to a place of epic history totally abandoned.

The place is just heat, dust, narrow streets… and history that runs deep. The old town part still has tiny trading stores that look a hundred years old. We have several suppliers in this town, people we have worked with for many years, in two cases over two generations.  If you ever wondered why AW has the best value and range of gemstone products, this place is one of our "trade secrets".. whoops another secret I tell you about. 

Once upon a time this was one of India’s great trading ports. The Gulf of Khambhat carried ships from Arabia, Africa, even Rome. Spices, silk, beads, ideas — all moving through this town long before the word “globalisation” was invented.

And stones.

Khambhat became famous for agate. Carnelian. Jasper. The earth here gives up these treasures, and for generations families have shaped them by hand. Not factories. Courtyard workshops. Fathers teaching sons. Now daughters too. The sound of cutting wheels, polishing drums, the rhythm of craft passed down quietly over centuries. Now the town imports gemstones from all over India, our friend the gemstone mine holder brings truck loads here.. right across India from Jharkhand. 

There’s something very Ancient Wisdom about that.

You walk through the lanes and see rough stones in sacks on the floor. Dust everywhere. Then you see the finished pieces — spheres, palms, geodes — glowing like captured sunsets. Transformation. Raw to refined. Earth to the object of meaning.

The pitch is overgrown, but the pavilion still stands.

In 1721, sailors of the East India Company played the game near Cambay (as Khambhat was then called), watched by locals and noted in the journals of Lieutenant Clement Downing — that seaside moment is often pointed to as the very first glimpse of the “gentleman’s game” in India. 

Can you believe it!! We found the birth place of Cricket in India.. legend has it that the locals learned the game. A movie was made about it.  Lagaan — the epic, Oscar-nominated drama about a drought-ravaged Indian village in 1893, where farmers challenge British officers to a match of cricket to win relief from oppressive taxes. It captured the imagination of an entire nation around cricket as a symbol of resistance, unity and transformation.