Where to Stay in Dohad, State of Gujarāt

What is Dohad known for?

Aurangzeb, sixth of the Mughal emperors and son of the fifth, Shah Jahan, came into the world in this river town, which is the fact that carries the name of Dohad furthest beyond Gujarāt. Tradition supplies the name itself. It is said to descend from Saint Dadhichi, whose ashram stood on the bank of the Dudhumati river, and the city that grew there now serves as the headquarters of Dahod District.

What are the main landmarks in Dohad?

The Lady Jackson hospital is the one building the record names in Dohad, and around it the town offers a river bank, a birthplace and an administration rather than a set of monuments. Aurangzeb was born in this place. The Dudhimati River runs past it, the ashram of Saint Dadhichi belongs to the tradition behind the name, and Dahod District is governed from the streets between them.

What is the history of Dohad?

Two stories meet on this river. The older one is told rather than dated: Saint Dadhichi kept an ashram on the bank of the Dudhumati river, and the name Dahod is said to have come down from him, which puts a holy man at the beginning of the account and leaves the century open. The second story is imperial and precise in its person if not its date.

Aurangzeb, who became the sixth Mughal emperor, was born in this town, and his father Shah Jahan was the fifth of that line, so the succession of an empire passes directly through a place on the Dudhimati River. What came after is quieter. The town settled into the role it still fills, as the headquarters from which Dahod District is administered, and its distances to the larger cities of Gujarāt, 214 kilometres to Ahmedabad, 159 kilometres to Vadodara, explain why an inland district needed a seat of its own out here.

The Lady Jackson hospital carries a name from a later age. It stands as the one institution the record singles out in Dohad, a reminder that the town's documented past is made of an ashram tradition, an imperial birth and a set of public buildings rather than of forts or dynastic seats. India holds all of it. Gujarāt is the state, Dahod District the unit, and Dohad the town on the water where those three threads are tied together.

Where is Dohad?

Inland ground, well away from the big cities. Dohad occupies the banks of the Dudhimati River in Dahod District, with Vadodara 159 kilometres off and Ahmedabad 214 kilometres away, which leaves it the largest place for some distance in this corner of Gujarāt. The tropics reach it.

India carries the town north of the equator, in the same belt that covers the whole of Dahod District.

What is the climate of Dohad?

Distance from any city changes nothing about the weather, and the 214 kilometres between Dohad and Ahmedabad are 214 kilometres of the same tropical belt that India carries north of the equator across this part of Gujarāt. Wet season, then dry. That is the division the year keeps here, on the Dudhimati River as across the rest of Dahod District.

How do you get to Dohad?

Vadodara is the nearer approach, at 159 kilometres, and Ahmedabad the longer one at 214 kilometres, so a journey to Dohad is measured in hours from either of the two cities most travellers in Gujarāt pass through first. Both runs end on the same river. Dahod District is reached by road from either of them, and the headquarters on the Dudhimati River is where a journey into the district finishes.