I am not sure that we would have discovered the collection of cars assembled by the maharajahs of Gondal had we not had a detailed guidebook to Gujarat. Maybe we might have learned about it by chance but being in possession of a guidebook made certain that we were aware of it.

Detailed guidebooks of Gujarat, written in English, are few and far between. During the planning and our actual trip, we made use of two books.

Philip Ward’s “Gujarat Daman Diu – A Travel Guide” was published in 1994. Like his excellent guidebook to Albania, Ward presents Gujarat and its associated former Portuguese colonies in the form of a detailed, informative travelogue. It is a book that is both designed to be read in an armchair and to be used ‘on the road’. However, it was written before the earthquake of 2001 and its practical information is out of…