Somnath Dwarka Tour Package by Tempo Traveller

The vehicle is the easy part. A group of fifteen fits in one tempo traveller and the arithmetic is in your favour: the same trip that starts at Rs. 13,999 per person by car starts at Rs. 12,999 here, because the vehicle is one cost divided by more heads. That thousand rupees is the whole case for the bigger vehicle and we are not going to inflate it into anything more spiritual.

What is harder is everything that happens when you stop. A group of three walks into a temple. A group of fifteen queues, deposits, regroups, loses two people, and finds them. Three things decide whether that is smooth, and no operator writes them down.

Fifteen phones go into a locker. The Shree Somnath Trust prohibits every electronic device inside the temple, mobiles, cameras, smartwatches and the rest, and stores them in free cloakroom lockers by the gate. Footwear goes to a free shoe house nearby, and there are two security checks between the road and the sanctum. The consequence nobody mentions is simple. Once the phones are in, your group cannot call each other. So we fix the meeting point and the time before anyone hands anything in, and we say it out loud twice.

Eight rooms is a block, not a booking. Fifteen travellers is seven or eight rooms in the same hotel on the same nights, and the good small properties on this coast cannot always release that many in season. Groups get told this late. We would rather tell you now: book early, and be willing to move tier before you move town.

Bet Dwarka is one vehicle now. Since Sudarshan Setu opened in February 2024 the island is a road crossing rather than a boat one, so a group of seventeen drives over together instead of being split across boats and reassembled on the other side. If you travelled here before 2024, that day is not the day you remember.

The route is the standard four day plan. Arrival and evening Dwarkadhish darshan, a full day on Bet Dwarka, Nageshwar and Rukmini, the 237 km run to Somnath through Porbandar for the 19:00 aarti, then a final morning of darshan and Triveni Sangam. It is set out hour by hour on the 4 days 3 nights plan and it does not change because the vehicle is bigger.

What changes is the margin. A group loses time at gates, not on roads, so we build the two tight moments differently.

Day one, the evening darshan. Dwarkadhish closes 13:00 to 17:00 and reopens for the evening. A group arriving at 17:30 is still depositing shoes at 18:00. We aim the vehicle at the reopening rather than the aarti.

Day three, the run to Somnath. Out of Dwarka by about 13:00, because the aarti is at 19:00 and the drive is four to five hours with a Porbandar stop. Fifteen people take longer to get into a vehicle than three, which sounds trivial until it has happened four times in one day. We call the departure earlier for a group and we mean it.

The concession, since you will work it out anyway. At exactly eight people the maths gets close, and two SUVs can be more comfortable than one tempo traveller for roughly the same money, with the trade that you arrive in two groups rather than one. For an aarti-led trip we usually still say one vehicle. For a group that wants to split its days, we will say two cars, and we will say it before you book.

8 to 10 — 12 seat tempo traveller: Comfortable with luggage. This is the sweet spot

11 to 14 — 17 seat tempo traveller: Still roomy, and the boot takes a full set of cases

15 to 17 — 17 seat, or a size up: Seventeen people plus seventeen bags in a seventeen seater is a long 237 km. If your group is at the top of the range we will quote the next size and tell you why

Rooms, and phones. Rooms because a block of eight in one property on fixed dates is the hardest thing to hold on this coast in season, and the answer is early booking rather than a better phone call in November. Phones because the Somnath cloakroom separates your group from its own communications at exactly the moment it is largest and most spread out, and a meeting point agreed in the vehicle solves it in ten seconds. The third, smaller, is the monsoon: Somnath's light and sound show does not run in the rainy season, so a July group should plan the evening around the 19:00 aarti alone.

Somnath bans all electronics inside. Free lockers and a free shoe house are at the gate.

Once the group deposits phones nobody can call anybody. Agree a meeting point first.

Fifteen travellers is a block of seven or eight rooms, so book early in season.

Day three leaves Dwarka by about 13:00, because the Somnath aarti is at 19:00.

Dwarkadhish closes 13:00 to 17:00, so a group arriving mid afternoon waits.

Somnath's light and sound show does not run during the monsoon.