India's Oldest Port City Lothal | Lothal Gujarat History in English | Ahmedabad to Harappan City Lothal | How to reach Lothal from Ahmedabad?

 When I was introduced to the subject of history, in class four , the first chapter that was taught was the Indus Valley Civilization . 

This ancient civilization of mankind, marked an indelible impression in the tender mind, and over the years it got nurtured with the desire to experience the excavated sites once in lifetime .  Lothal is around 80kms far from Ahmedabad ,and makes a perfect one day tour from the Manchester of the East . 

It is best visited by hiring a cab , owing to the remoteness of the place .  But we are budget travellers , so we tried to reach the ancient site by using public transport . Geeta Mandir is the Central bus station of Ahmedabad.From there frequent buses at an interval of around 15 minutes is found for Bagodara . We boarded one such bus . Most of the people of Gujarat travel by bus , because the bus service is simply excellent over there , and frequent buses connect the cities at a very cheap rate. For around 65 kms the bus fare was only Rs.81/- per passenger , and it took around one and a half hours . We got down at Tarapur Chowkri (which is one km before the Bagodara bus station ), and took the highway that leads to Vataman.Only one auto rickshaw was parked over there . Since we went in off season , there were no other passengers plying through the route . The auto driver asked for Rs.400/-  for to and fro journey to the excavated site of Lothal.He even waited for us at the site .We think that was a good deal , as there were no other auto rickshaws or shared Jeep at the site .  

After around half an hour of crossing the  vast expanses of agricultural land ( which was mostly barren during our visit) we were relieved to see the boundary gates of the excavated site of Lothal .   When India got divided and the new country of Pakistan was born, most of the important sites of the Indus valley civilization fell on the Pakistan side . But in the western part of India numerous small sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization have been discovered .

 Lothal is one of them and it is important in the sense that it houses one of the oldest dockyards of the world .  The Lothal city is more than 4000 years old, the ruins of which gave us goosebumps. It was discovered by archaeologist S.R.Rao in 1955 and in the contemporary period three other sites were also discovered and those are Rakhigarhi , Kalibangan and Dholavira.  In the ancient times the present Rann of Kutchh was submerged under under the sea , and the river Bhogava which was a tributary of the  Sabarmati river used to flow from here  . This river served an important role of connectig the city of Lothal with the sea . So trade roots were established with Egypt Sumer and Bahrain , which is supported by the discovery of a Persian gulf Seal from Lothal .  At first we saw the dockyard which the archaeologists believe to be the oldest tidal dockyard of the world .The ancient people had the holistic knowledge of building a civilization of superior standard,and studying the tidal waves they built brick kilned port at Lothal, which became a focal point of Harappan culture.We saw little bit of water and crystalised salt in the dock .  The thriving city of Lothal was small in terms of area and it was demarcated by the upper citadel where the aristorated people lived and the lower town for the labour class . They used baked bricks to build their houses . We were awe struck by the technique they implemented some 4000 years ago ,  the bricks were still bound together with lime and mortar and has  stood the test of time.   We know Mohenjodaro means mound of the dead . In local language Lothal also means mound of the dead . The people residing from earlier times in and around Lothal had the knowledge of this lost ancient city so they named the place as Lothal where "Loth" means ashes of the dead and "thal" is "sthal" or place .  It is believed that a severe flood destroyed the city , silt got deposited , which made the navigation of the  ships impossible  ,slowly the standard of living deterioratied, and the thriving city was choked to death .  We spent around one and a half hours in the ruins , and  seeing the brick foundation we tried to draw the buildings in our imagination .The 4000 years old city  was a planned township , and the houses were  built in grid pattern . It must have been a busy place, with port ,ships , houses , wells , roads and markets, cemetery, beads making factory and most importantly the humans without whom the city is lifeless and hence deserted.  Some important discoveries made from the Lothal  excavated site are rice husk , modern day chess board, practice of double burial in the cemetery, fire altars , and terracotta replica of ships . There is a small archaeological museum at the excavated site . It remains closed on fridays and entry ticket is Rs.5/- only , for  Indian citizens . Various artefacts like pottery, seals and beads have been found by digging the earth and is  kept on display in the museum . But when we went in April 2022 it was closed for renovation for an indefinite period of time .  There was ample of space for car parking and we couldn't find any eatery over there. By the same auto rickshaw we came back to Bagodara bus station and we had our lunch in the  Bagodara bus stand canteen .It wasn't tasty but served the purpose .  Suresh Bhai by whose auto we went to the excavated site seemed to be a decent person and his phone number is 9558912578.    Expenses of the journey for 2 people: Auto to Geeta mandir -20 Breakfast-50 Nuts and toffees -20 Bus to bagodara tarapur chaukri -162 Auto to lothal  and back-400 Lunch -100 Ice cream -20 Bus to Geeta mandir -142 Total  expenses -914 for two people .