The boat ride that frames everything
The ferry from Okha to Bet Dwarka takes about fifteen minutes. You sit on a wooden bench, salt air coming at you sideways, and the island resolves out of the haze as something smaller than you expected. Pilgrims around you are already holding marigold garlands. Some have travelled from Rajasthan or Maharashtra, weeks of planning compressed into this crossing. The island is formally called Beyt Dwarka, beyt meaning island in Gujarati, and it sits about five kilometres off the coast of Okha in Gujarat's Devbhoomi Dwarka district. Tradition holds that this was Krishna's personal residence, separate from the administrative capital of Dwarka on the mainland. That distinction matters when you are trying to understand what people come here for, and why the archaeology has complicated the story without quite resolving it.
