Vadodara (Baroda)

Vadodara (or Baroda as it’s usually known) is a cultured, harmonious university town 100km southeast of Ahmedabad, which explodes into life during festival season. The impressive museum, overwrought Indo-Saracenic palace and beautiful Tambekar Wada is also visited inside a day or two, but the primary reason for coming right here is the nearby, fantastic Unesco World Heritage site Champaner, with its mosques lost inside landscape.

Prior to Independence, Vadodara was the capital with the princely Gaekwad state, and these days prides itself as an educational centre, and household on the sprawling MS University.