Mr. P D Vaghela, Managing Director of Gujarat Tourism

Gujarat is India’s westernmost and most industrialized state. As if chemicals, diamond cutting, textiles, thermal electricity, pharmaceuticals and other heavyweight manufacturing weren’t enough to occupy its teeming 51 million population, this year, the state began muscling into a sector previously dominated by the likes of Katmandu, Agra and the Taj Mahal, Goa and Delhi along India’s tourist trail.

The state government created 2006 Gujarat’s Year of Tourism and came out punching above their weight, revealing a raft of tourism aces up their wide cotton sleeves. The people are digging deep into rich seams of history and culture with strings of ancient temples and Victorian monuments. They are mining the beauty of a landscape that stretches out into the Arabian Sea, “like an open jaw of a lion” with the Saurashtra peninsula and the Kutch desert marking their mid-western border. They are promoting their four National Parks, and 21 wildlife sanctuaries.

And they have struck gold with their program of non-stop festivals and fairs. Over 2,500 festival a year authorities claim. January sees the dazzling International Kite Festival. Many more, the Navratri Festival in September in particular, fly just as high. Although Navratri is held throughout the country, nowhere is it experienced more spectacularly than in Gujarat.

How does it compare to the festivals of Seville and Edinburgh or the carnivals of Rio, Trinidad, Notting Hill and the rest? If you’re talking jaw-gaping spectacle, mesmeric harmony and unadulterated (literally) exuberance, none of them, not one, and nothing else, anywhere, can beat Gujarat’s Navratri Festival. They have yet to negotiate the complicated international TV rights, but when they do, Gujarat will explode kaleidoscopically onto the international tourist map.

Gujarat’s Navratri Festival, is “a circle of ecstasy” that throbs non-stop for nine nights with millions of fantastically costumed devotees swaying in a fusion of dance and devotion.

“Although this festival is celebrated throughout India,” Gujarat’s canny and charismatic Chief Minister, Shri Narendra Modi told the audience of 200,000 in his inaugural speech in 2006. “Nowhere is it performed with more panache and fervor than here in Gujarat.”

The opening ceremony in the capital city of Ahmedabad was a seamlessly dazzling two-hour high-tech/trad-folk stage show featuring 672 dancers, singers and musicians from Astrakhan, Indonesia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan along with those from six Indian states. They constituted an encouraging mix of religions: Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and others, performing their own music and dance, and then performing perfectly together in a massive tableau of international and religious musical fellowship.

Swinging Garbas
In full swing, Navratri exploded everywhere, most intensely in nightly “Garbas.” These are folk dances that originated in Gujarat with complex circular formations to represent the design of the lotus, among other mystical configurations. Jazzed-up versions have been performed in Bollywood movies. But in Gujarat spectators got the whole uninhibited, spontaneously jubilant, genuinely traditional experience.

Photo Courtesy Gujarat Tourism

In one Garba at Amhedabad’s heliport, an estimated fifty thousand fantastically dressed people aged from two to 90 danced and whirled through the night, arms and hands fluttering intricately in time to the driving 40-minute long musical passages.

Men in traditional dhoti-kurta (long shirt and a long flowing garment worn over the lower part of the body), and women in chania-choli (mirror-work skirts and blouses), dance gracefully together to hypnotic music from Dholak players (drummers), flautists and singers.

It is exhilarating to watch and dancers are happy for visitors to participate. Most, though, are left wallowing way behind the locals who have studied and practiced Garba for years. The simple synchronicity of their movements seems effortless, but their intricacy is way beyond casual imitation.
Most striking was that unlike most celebrated festivals, the dancers’ exultation and unselfconscious joy is not fueled by drink (Gujarat is a dry state.) or artificial substances.

“The festival is one of several reasons why tourism is also leaping in Gujarat,” said one of the state’s longest-established travel agents, Jayant Rao.

Jnraoindia.com explains why. “International tourism to Gujarat is soaring from 60,000 in 2005 to an expected 150,000 this year. Many come for our archaeological sites: excavations like Dholavira dating to 2500BC, which offers an unparalleled insight of the Great Indus Valley Civilization. The sunken holy city off Dwarka is even older. Other important excavations like Lothal are in such wonderful condition that they bring ancient history alive. And people come especially for our wildlife too. We have the world’s remaining black-maned Asiatic lions, we have unique wild asses and wild bucks, the lush high hills of Saputara, breathtaking and unspoiled coastal resorts, a fascinating coastline dotted with forts, shore temples, intriguing port cities and palaces.”

“And where else in the world would you see tens of thousands of people on rooftops, watching the sky change color from deep blue as thousands of decorated kites, designer kites and stunt kites fly like rainbows in a glittering sun after the rain?” asked ‘PD’ Vaghela, Managing Director of Gujarat Tourism. “Well that’s going to happen this January during the Hindu festival of Uttarayan, at the world’s only international kite festival, with entries from more than fifty countries, including America of course.”

The fascination and the revelry associated with the kite flying cuts across age groups, class and communities. Typical of the Gujarati’s enterprise, manufacturing kites has become yet another serious spin-off business. It attracts big names of the corporate world with kites providing cost-effective branding opportunities. Right now, throughout Gujarat, homes have been turned into kite producing factories with the entire family getting into a seasonal cottage kite-building industry.
The state itself is now investing heavily in the modern fundamental that underpins its exuberant attractions.

“We’re spending $100 million on infrastructure and tourist facilities,” said PD Vaghela.

“Okay, right now, hotel accommodation outside the major centers needs some buffing up. So we’re offering tax breaks to entrepreneurs to improve their facilities. Also this year, we have trained 600 guides who can speak very good English and Spanish and other languages. That’s pretty good from a base of not many guides at all, let me tell you,” he added.

“We intend developing professional tourist attitudes among waiters, taxi drivers and room boys,” he continued. “So everywhere tourists will be openly welcomed with the correct etiquette. We want our people also to know a little about Americans. Many Gujarati’s live in the USA and have started to network on our behalf.”

Gujarat intends to mobilize its mix of modernity, ancient attractions and unspoiled landscapes to become a leading world destination.

“And Gujarat is very safe,” Vaghela pointed out. “Women can walk alone at night. During Navratri, millions of girls and boys danced through nine nights and not a single law and order case resulted. This is truly amazing!” he proclaimed.