Surat

About Surat

An estimated nine out of ten of the world's diamonds are cut and polished in Surat, a booming port city on the Tapi River near the Arabian Sea in southern Gujarat. With more than four and a half million people in the 2011 census and many more since, it is also India's Silk City, weaving vast quantities of fabric and the shimmering zari thread used in saris.

In Mughal times Surat was the empire's richest port, the gateway for pilgrims sailing to Mecca, and in 1612 the English set up their first trading post in India here, followed by the Dutch and others. Their tombs still stand in old European cemeteries, and the riverside castle built in the 1540s to repel the Portuguese has been restored.

Today visitors come for the black-sand beaches at Dumas and Suvali, the shaded Dutch Garden, the restored Gopi Talav lake and the Science Centre. Above all, they come to eat: an old saying advises eating in Surat, and the city's locho, ghari and undhiyu are the reasons why.