# India's first heritage city, Gujarat's first KCD
> Gujarat's first KCD is in Ahmedabad on 19 September. The city from a local: where to eat, the 600-year-old pols, and what nobody warns you about.
Published: 2026-09-01 · Updated: 2026-09-01 · Tags: kubernetes, community, kcd
Canonical: https://rushabhshah.dev/blog/kcd-gujarat-2026-ahmedabad-guide/
In 2017, while I was finishing my SSC, the news came on television that [Ahmedabad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmedabad) had been named [India's first World Heritage City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historic_City_of_Ahmadabad). Not a heritage *site*, of which India has plenty. A whole city, the first in the country. UNESCO announced it that July 2017.
I remember it landing differently than most news does, because I was born here. My mother had me in Ahmedabad in the early 2000s, so this was not a fact about somewhere else. It was a fact about the place I walk around in.
The city has carried more than one name, and people still argue about it. Around 1094 a Solanki king, [Karnadev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karna_I), founded a settlement called Karnavati near the older town of Ashaval. Three centuries later, in 1411, Ahmed Shah founded Ahmedabad beside it. The two lived side by side for about a hundred and sixty years, and historians still disagree about whether Ahmedabad simply *is* Karnavati or was always the newer town next door. That unresolved question is exactly why the renaming argument never quite dies.
I have a soft spot for cities whose names are arguments. I [wrote about Garhwal recently](/blog/kubernetes-v1-37-garhwal/), which takes its name from fifty-two forts that were folded into one kingdom. Ahmedabad has two names and no agreement. Garhwal has one name built out of fifty-two things. Both are places whose identity is a negotiation.
My mother was a teacher, and a housewife, and the toughest person I have known. She is retired now, mostly cooking food far better than anything I can buy, and I am doing my best to make sure the rest of her life is the easy part. Most of what I know about this city came from her, and from a large extended family on her side who never left it.
Here is the thing you actually need to know before you arrive. Ahmedabad is split in two. There is new Ahmedabad and old Ahmedabad, but nobody local says it that way. In Gujarati it is **નદી ની આ બાજુ અને નદી ની પેલી બાજુ**: this side of the river, and that side of the river.
Which is a game of relativity, obviously. *This* side depends entirely on where you happen to be standing. Ask two people from Ahmedabad which side is which and you may get two different answers, both correct.
The river settles it on a map, at least:
Every street in central Ahmedabad, and the Sabarmati doing the dividing. Everything west of it is the newer city; the old walled town sits on the east bank. Hover to bring the river forward.
Same city now hosting [KCD Gujarat 2026](https://www.kcdgujarat.com/) on **Saturday, 19 September 2026**. It is Gujarat's first ever Kubernetes Community Day, backed by the [CNCF](https://www.cncf.io/): one full day, two tracks, and a room full of people who would otherwise only ever meet you on a Slack thread or a GitHub issue.
Whether this is your first time in Ahmedabad or your tenth and you somehow still missed all of this, here is what I would tell a friend flying in.
## What the day actually looks like
Registration and breakfast open at **7:30**, the first keynote is at 9:30, and the whole thing closes at 5:30 with a group photo. That is a long Saturday, and they feed you three times inside it: breakfast, lunch and high tea, all on site, all pure vegetarian. Tell them about a dietary need when you register and it goes to the kitchen.
Two halls run in parallel all day. [Three keynotes](https://www.kcdgujarat.com/schedule) open it:
- **Hrittik Roy** of vCluster and **Surabhi Mishra** of American Express, on control plane patterns for regulated platforms, under the best title on the schedule: *Picking Ahmedabad Isn't Sovereignty*.
- **Atulpriya Sharma**, CNCF Ambassador at Improving, on *The Cloud Native Cooperative: How Amul Already Solved AI's Trust Problem*.
- **Sagar Utekar** of CrowdStrike, a CNCF Ambassador, Docker Captain and Kubestronaut, on *The State of Cloud Native in India: The Good, The Bad, and The Unspoken*.
Something I enjoyed more than I should have: three of the accepted titles are Gujarat jokes. Amul is the cooperative every Gujarati grew up drinking. *Kem Cho, OTel Collectors?* is "how are you" in Gujarati. *The Dandiya Defense to Poisoned Prompts* is named after the stick dance. Whoever reviewed the CFP was enjoying themselves, and the speakers clearly did their homework on the host city.
Out of the rest, the ones I have circled: **Ram Iyengar** of the Linux Foundation on OpenCost and what Kubernetes actually costs you, **Zespre Chang** of SUSE on bridging bare-metal provisioning to KubeVirt, and, filed under titles that double as a warning, *I Swear the Database Was Alive 5 Minutes Ago*. There is a Women in Tech gathering at 2:30 in Hall 2. Thirty-three speakers in all, from Google, IBM, Red Hat, DigitalOcean, SUSE, Mastercard and a lot of places closer to home; the [full list is here](https://www.kcdgujarat.com/speakers).
On formats, so you can pack accordingly: keynotes are 10 to 20 minutes, talks are 25 with five of that for questions, and the day ends in a lightning round of 10-minute slots. No workshops this year, so you can travel light and leave the laptop in the room if you want to.
Tickets are on [KonfHub](https://konfhub.com/kcd-gujarat) and go in tiers, so the price only moves one way. What you see at checkout is what you pay, GST and gateway fees included, and it covers every meal, a swag kit, a certificate and your badge. Non-refundable, but transferable if your plans move.
If you have not booked yet, **RUSHABH25** takes **25% off** at checkout. Between that and the tiers only ever going up, the cheapest this day will ever be is right now.
## Getting here
Ahmedabad has its own international airport, [Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardar_Vallabhbhai_Patel_International_Airport), code AMD, and it is a direct flight from most Indian metros. If you would rather watch the country go past, Ahmedabad Junction takes trains from Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.
The venue is [Narayani Heights](https://narayaniheights.com/) at Bhat, out on the Ahmedabad to Gandhinagar road, next to Apollo Hospital, which is the landmark every driver here will actually recognise. That location does you a favour: it is about **7 km from the airport** and roughly twenty minutes by road, so if you fly in you are barely in traffic before you have arrived.
Ahmedabad Junction is the opposite story. It sits down in the old city, about 20 km south of the venue, so if you are coming by train, budget properly for that last leg. Ahmedabad is not a badly jammed city, but there is construction going on across various places right now and it will slow you down. Plan for 30 to 40 minutes including buffer, and re-route if it catches you.
One route nobody thinks of, mostly because people do not know we have one: the metro. Tapovan Circle is the closest station, about 3 km out, ten minutes in an auto for the last stretch. It runs direct from Sabarmati and Ranip, and if you are coming up from Kalupur you change at Old High Court. On a Saturday morning that beats the highway.
On where to stay, there are two honest answers. Bhat and the Gandhinagar highway stretch put you next to the venue and it is quiet, and the venue is itself a hotel, so the laziest option available to you is a room at Narayani Heights and a lift downstairs. Across the river, Navrangpura or Ashram Road put you next to the food and the old city, and cost you a commute in the morning. I would take the second one, but I live here and I am biased about the evenings.
Autos, Ola and Uber all work fine once you are on the ground. Autos will usually run on the meter across the river; for anything under three or four kilometres it is a hundred rupees or so either way. UPI works nearly everywhere, including at stalls you would not expect it to, but keep two or three hundred in cash for the old city, because one machine is always down.
On the weather: mid-September is the tail of the monsoon, so the question is not heat, it is whether it rains on you. Expect 33 or 34 in the day, 26 to 28 overnight, humidity around 71 per cent, sunrise at 06:26 and sunset at 18:40. Light breathable clothes, and one thing that survives a downpour. And if a Gujarati tells you to carry an umbrella that morning, carry the umbrella. The bulletin gives you a probability, **અંબાલાલ કાકા** gives you a community consensus, and the community has been right often enough to keep asking. For anyone who doesn't know Ambalal, he is one of the known figures in Gujarat, and when he says it rains, it rains, man. Google can't predict the rain the way he predicts it 🤣 Google needs a googly from him.
## The thing nobody warns you about
Gujarat is dry. Has been since 1960, and it is not a technicality that everyone quietly ignores. There is no bar at the venue, none at your hotel, and none on Sindhu Bhavan Road.
If you want a drink, visitors from outside the state can apply for a temporary permit, and the larger hotels with a licensed shop on site will walk you through it. Do the paperwork properly and do not carry anything in across the border, because that is the part that turns into a genuine problem rather than an inconvenience.
The honest version, though, is that nobody here is drinking, so the whole social evening runs on something else. Chaas after a heavy lunch, soda at a stall at eleven at night, kulfi on the way home. Conference dinners in this city are people standing around eating, for four hours, entirely sober, and still being the loudest room in the building. It works better than you would think.
## What to eat
When it comes to any city, locals are always welcoming and sweet, but when it comes to Gujarat, ohhh god, we eat sweet, we speak sweet, and we want sweet out of you. You are in the state that gave the world the [Gujarati thali](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarati_thali), and Ahmedabad takes it seriously. A proper thali here is a sit-down event, not a quick meal. The good places serve it unlimited, which sounds generous until you realise they mean it and you are being refilled for the fourth time with no way out. Go in hungry and let them. Waving them off early is the one mistake visitors make.
Three I would send anyone to: [**Gordhan Thal**](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z4E7saEB5G2RHqEJA), **[Gwal Bhog](https://maps.app.goo.gl/cUpeiGJb6tHfqaNCA)**, and **[Vishalla](https://maps.app.goo.gl/9Z6EwTyqoAfyh8zF6)**, which serves in an open-air recreated village and is worth going to for the setting alone. After those: **Rajwadu**, **Agashiye** at the House of MG, and **Toran Dining Hall**, all of which will do the same job on you.
_the sitting down list, where you will lose an evening_
- **The unlimited thali**: Gordhan Thal, Vishalla, Rajwadu, Agashiye at the House of MG, Toran Dining Hall. Go hungry and stop waving them off.
- **Urban Khichdi**: Khichdi is what a Gujarati household eats on a normal Sunday night. This place turns it into a menu.
- **Jassi de Parathe**: Punjabi, and the one non-Gujarati thing I will send you to without hesitating.
- **Ashrafi Kulfi**: Then Natural Ice Cream, then The Chocolate Room. In that order, on the same night, if you can manage it.
Street food is the other half, and it is a morning-to-midnight thing here rather than an evening one. Breakfast is fafda jalebi, and the right place for it is Chandravilas in the old city, in the morning, not at four in the afternoon. Somewhere in the middle of the day there is khaman, gathiya, dabeli, vada pav and bhajiya, plus a few that never make it onto anybody's list: **Shakti Sandwich**, which has nothing to do with what you call a sandwich, **Anjoy Frankie**, and **Puffiza** if somebody in the group wants pizza and will not be talked out of it. And [Manek Chowk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manek_Chowk_(Ahmedabad)) turns into a night market once the jewellers shut for the day, which is a genuinely strange and lovely thing to watch happen. [Law Garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Garden) is the classic evening stall strip.
_the standing up list, in the order a local would do it_
- **Fafda jalebi at Chandravilas**: Breakfast, and only breakfast. Chandravilas in Gandhi Road has been doing it since 1900.
- **Das Khaman**: Soft, yellow, steamed, sweet-and-sour. Das is the name everyone defaults to.
- **Gathiya Rath and ISCON Gathiya**: Gathiya is a whole food group here, not a snack. Eat it with papaya sambharo.
- **Dhokla**: Not the same thing as khaman, and Gujaratis will correct you on this. Learn the difference before you argue.
- **Manek Chowk at night**: Jewellers by day, night market after ten. Watching the switch happen is half the point.
- **Karnavati Dabeli**: Kutchi burger, sweet and spicy, pomegranate on top. Karnavati is the one people queue for.
- **Jaybhavani Vada Pav**: Mumbai's, adopted here without apology. Jaybhavani has outlets everywhere now.
- **Raipur Bhajiya House**: Monsoon food that Ahmedabad eats year round. Also try Ambica Daal Vada while you are on that side.
- **Panki at Swati Snacks**: Steamed in a banana leaf, and you peel it off yourself. Swati Snacks is where most people meet it first.
For sitting still afterwards, **Coffee Culture**, **Varietea** and **Mocha** are the three cafes I would name if you want somewhere nobody moves you along. And nobody in this city finishes a night without something cold: **Ashrafi Kulfi** first, then **Natural Ice Cream**, then **The Chocolate Room** if you are still standing.
Beyond Gujarati, I pick by mood. South Indian sends me to **[Kovalam](https://kovallamrestaurant.com/)**. Punjabi sends me to **[Jassi de Parathe](https://jassideparathe.com/locations.html)**. Italian is a different list again. If you want the rest of it, nudge me on [LinkedIn](https://in.linkedin.com/in/iamrushabhshahh) or [X](https://x.com/iamrushabhshahh) and we can just go together. Genuinely, that offer is open, catch is first come first serve.
If you would rather not talk to anybody, that is completely fine and here is your list. [**Urban Chowk**](https://urbanchowk.com/) near Bopal is an open-air food court with a dozen options in one place. [**Ahmedabad One**](https://www.nexusselecttrust.com/nexus-ahmedabad-one), also known as Alpha One Mall, and [**Palladium**](https://www.palladiumahmedabad.com/) are the malls, and their food courts cover most cuisines under one roof. And [**Sindhu Bhavan Road**](https://share.google/5gq87iZfENiKHvNcV), which everyone here shortens to SBR, is an entire road of outlets and the closest thing the city has to a single strip that will feed anyone.
That is really the point about food here. Whatever you eat, and whatever you do not, Ahmedabad has a version of it. Nobody arrives here and goes hungry. I am a little veg kinda guy, so I am not the one who can tell you what is best, but I do have friends and they have great taste for it, so **Moti Mahal**, **KFC**, **Knife and Fork** and places like that are where you will find good non-veg food too.
## What to see in half a day
If you only do one thing on this list, do the [old city heritage walk](https://heritagewalkahmedabad.com/). It starts at 7:30 in the morning from the Swaminarayan Temple in Kalupur, runs about two hours through the [pols](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_(housing)), and finishes at the Jama Masjid. The early start is the whole point: you see the lanes waking up instead of baking, and you are done before the day gets going.
The pols are the part you cannot see anywhere else. Clustered wooden-fronted lanes, shared courtyards, bird feeders on poles, all of it still lived in. That is what got Ahmedabad the World Heritage listing, not any single monument.
Everything below is on the same side of the river, and most of it is within twenty minutes of the walk.
_the old city, ordered roughly by how far you have to walk_
- **Sarkhej Roza**: A mosque, a tomb and a tank around a courtyard, 8 km southwest. Go an hour before sunset and stay for it.
- **Bai Harir ni Vav**: A five storey stepwell from 1499, built by a woman of Mahmud Begada's household. You walk down into it, not past it.
- **Jhulta Minara**: The shaking minarets at Sidi Bashir Mosque. Push one and the other moves. Nobody has fully explained why.
- **Sidi Saiyyed Mosque**: The tree of life carved out of a single stone lattice. It is on the IIM Ahmedabad crest and half the city's letterheads.
- **Badshah no Hajiro**: Ahmed Shah's own tomb, the man the city is named after, sitting in the middle of a working bazaar.
- **Rani no Hajiro**: The queens' tombs, a two minute walk away, now ringed by cloth shops. Women only in the inner chamber.
- **Jama Masjid**: 1424, 260 pillars, and a courtyard that goes quiet the second you step into it.
- **Bhadra Fort**: The bhadra killo, 1411. Effectively where the whole city started.
- **The pols**: Wooden fronted lanes, shared courtyards, bird feeders on poles. This is the bit that got Ahmedabad its UNESCO listing.
Cross back over and the city changes register. Museums here are unusually good for a city that does not advertise itself as a museum city, and the riverfront is where everyone ends up in the evening anyway.
_museums, and the newer side of the river_
- **Sabarmati Ashram**: Gandhi's home for over a decade, on the riverbank. Free, quiet, worth two hours.
- **Calico Museum of Textiles**: One of the best textile collections anywhere. Guided tours only and they book out, so plan this one ahead.
- **Tribal Museum**: At Gujarat Vidyapith. Instruments, masks and textiles from the adivasi communities of eastern Gujarat, and almost nobody goes.
- **Auto World Vintage Car Museum**: Pranlal Bhogilal's collection. Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, a Lagonda, and you can ride in some of them.
- **Sardar Patel National Memorial**: In Moti Shahi Mahal at Shahibaug. Small, well kept, and a good half hour.
- **Vikram Sarabhai Space Exhibition**: The community science centre in Navrangpura. Built for schoolkids, still fun at thirty.
- **Gujarat Science City**: Aquatic gallery, robotics gallery, IMAX. Give it a full half day or do not bother.
- **Kankaria Lake**: A 15th century lake with a walking track, a toy train and food stalls around it. Closed Mondays.
- **Sabarmati Riverfront**: The promenade. Best once the heat breaks, which in September means after seven.
## What to see with a full day
Gandhinagar is the state capital and it is twenty-five minutes north of the venue, which makes it the easiest add-on if you are staying an extra day. The bird sanctuaries are further out and worth the early start.
_Gandhinagar and the day trips, all under an hour out_
- **Adalaj ni Vav**: Twenty minutes from the venue and the single most photogenic thing near Ahmedabad. Five storeys, carved top to bottom, 1499.
- **Indroda Dinosaur and Fossil Park**: India's own Jurassic Park, built on one of the world's largest hatcheries of dinosaur eggs. Yes, really.
- **Dandi Kutir**: A museum shaped like a mound of salt, inside the Mahatma Mandir campus. The whole building is the exhibit.
- **Akshardham**: The Gandhinagar one, older than the Delhi temple. Security is airport grade, so leave the bag in the car.
- **Thol Bird Sanctuary**: Forty minutes out. Flamingos, pelicans, cranes. Early morning or it is just a lake.
- **Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary**: Sixty km out, a shallow lake you cross by boat. September is early in the season, so go for the water, not the count.
## Where to shop
Nobody comes to a Kubernetes conference planning to buy fabric, and then everybody goes home with fabric. It happens every single time.
The split is the same as everything else in this city. The old side sells cloth by the metre and expects you to bargain. The new side sells brands and does not. **CG Road** sits between the two, an ordinary shopping street that is genuinely pleasant to walk in the evening.
_markets first, malls after, because that is the right order_
- **Dhalgarwad**: Fabric by the metre, in the old city. Bargain, and go early before it gets shoulder to shoulder.
- **Ratanpol**: Next lane over. Same idea, more variety, more chaos.
- **Teen Darwaza**: The 1415 triple gateway, and the market that grew around it and never left.
- **Law Garden**: A public garden by day. The mirror-work and bandhani stalls come up along the pavement in the evening, food carts right behind them.
- **Ahmedabad Haat**: Vastrapur. Handicrafts straight from the artisans, which is the part the malls cannot do.
- **Palladium and Ahmedabad One**: The two malls. Air conditioning, brands, and food courts that will feed anyone in your group.
## Meet the local community
Here is the part I would not skip. This is not one meetup group renting a hall. Four cloud native community chapters put it together, from Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Rajkot and Vadodara, which is most of the state's cloud native scene deciding to do one thing together for the first time.
That changes who is in the room. The people checking your badge run the meetups for the rest of the year, in four different cities, unpaid. If you have ever wanted to start something like this where you live, this is the cheapest possible research: find one of them between talks and ask how they did it. They will tell you, at length, and probably feed you.
If you are around the evening before or after, the [Kubernetes Ahmedabad meetup](https://www.meetup.com/kubernetes-ahmedabad/) is where anything informal gets posted, and the event itself is [@kcdgujarat](https://x.com/kcdgujarat) on X, LinkedIn and Instagram.
And if you have not booked yet, do that before you read anything else on this page twice: [tickets are on KonfHub](https://konfhub.com/kcd-gujarat), the early bird does actually expire, and **RUSHABH25** takes 25% off it.
Or pay nothing. If this post was useful, share it, and I am going to try to put **three free tickets** in the hands of three people who did. Post it wherever you live online, tag me on [X](https://x.com/iamrushabhshahh) or [LinkedIn](https://in.linkedin.com/in/iamrushabhshahh), and I will pick three names on **12 September**, which leaves the winners a week to sort out getting here.
Since you have read this far, where I sit in all of it. I am on the volunteer team as a speaker buddy, which means that if you are giving a talk that day, getting you into the right hall, mic'd up and starting on time is my problem and not yours. And **Grafana & Friends Ahmedabad**, the community I run here, is one of the community partners. So I will be somewhere in that building from breakfast to the group photo, mostly walking quickly.
So if you are coming from out of town and want a coffee, or a walk through the old city before your flight, find me at the event or on [X](https://x.com/iamrushabhshahh). I am always happy to show someone around the place I grew up in.
Photo credits: 43 images, all from Wikimedia Commons
