The city that was already ancient when history began
You arrive at Lothal expecting ruins. What you find is a city. Not the idea of one, the actual grid of it, the drainage channels running parallel to streets, the raised citadel platform, the brick-lined dock that archaeologists date to around 2400 BCE. The dock is the thing that stops you. It measures roughly 214 metres by 36 metres, and it connects to the Sabarmati through a channel that the Harappan engineers designed to account for tidal flow. They understood tides. They built accordingly. This was not a settlement that happened to be near water, it was a port that organised itself around maritime trade, sending carnelian beads and shell ornaments as far as Mesopotamia.
