Willingdon Dam

East of Junagadh, where the town's last streets give out and the ground tilts up toward the Girnar foothills and the great volcanic wall of the massif beyond, a low bund of dressed masonry holds back the Kalwa river.

• This is the Willingdon Dam.
• Work began on 11 May 1929 under Nawab Muhammad Mahabat Khan III of the princely Junagadh state, to a design by the engineer E.
• Proctor Sims, and after nearly seven years the dam was inaugurated on 10 January 1936 by Lord Willingdon, then Viceroy of India, whose name it took.
• Forty-four feet high and holding roughly a billion gallons, it was built for an unglamorous purpose — dependable drinking water for Junagadh — and it still does that job for the town and the villages around it.
• In November 2008 it was formally renamed the Sardar Patel Dam, though almost everyone locally still says Willingdon.
• What brings visitors is the view.
• The reservoir lies directly beneath the Girnar massif, so the water doubles as a mirror for one of Gujarat's most recognisable skylines: a long serrated ridge that turns copper at sunrise and blue at dusk.
• Families drive out from town to sit on the embankment through the late afternoon, and photographers come for the reflections on still winter mornings.
• Birdlife along the margins is generous — egrets, herons and kingfishers work the shallows — and the scrubby banks reward an unhurried hour with binoculars.
• The dam is at its best in and just after the monsoon, roughly July to November, when the reservoir brims, thin waterfalls thread down the Girnar slopes and the surrounding scrub turns emerald.
• November to February brings cool, clear air and the easiest walking.
• By late spring the water can draw a long way back from the bund, and the exposed margins turn to sticky mud after heavy rain, so wear shoes you do not mind ruining.
• There is no gate, no ticket and no counter here, and nothing at all is sold at the water's edge — come in daylight, bring your own drinking water and anything you plan to eat, and carry your litter back out with you.
• Treat it as an easy add-on rather than a destination in its own right.
• Damodar Kund and the Girnar taleti — where the stone stairway of several thousand steps up to Girnar's Hindu and Jain temple complexes begins — lie roughly two kilometres north, and Uparkot Fort, the Ashokan rock edicts and the Buddhist caves are all a short drive away in Junagadh town.
• One practical warning: this is not the Hasnapur Dam, a separate and much larger reservoir roughly nine kilometres north-north-east of here and a considerably longer drive out of town.
• The two are routinely confused, and directions for one will not bring you to the other.
• Plan this as a picnic stop and eat properly in Junagadh.
• Geeta Lodge, on Railway Station Road a few minutes from Junagadh Junction, has served an unlimited pure-vegetarian Gujarati thali since 1938 and runs a lunch service only, from about 10.30 am to mid-afternoon — hours vary between listings, so check before you set out, and confirm the kitchen is fully vegetarian before ordering.
• Pure-veg Kathiyawadi thali houses around Kalwa Chowk and simple bhojanalayas at the Girnar taleti turn out rotli, shaak, dal-bhaat and chaas through the day — confirm the kitchen is fully vegetarian before ordering at any of them.
• Farsan shops in the town centre sell khaman, fafda, gathiya and jalebi that travel well in a picnic bag — confirm the stall is fully vegetarian before ordering.
• Junagadh leans strongly vegetarian, but that is a tendency rather than a guarantee, so ask at the counter instead of assuming.
• If you are here in May or June, look for the region's Kesar mangoes, grown on the slopes around Girnar.