We took our baby to breakfast at the dining hall of our budget hotel in Bhavnagar and found a group of six extremely fit tall, dark and handsome men turn their heads around and break into chuckles and cackles to grab our boy's attention. We smiled politely and took a table while the waiter had trouble comprehending our order of toast-and-butter and toast-and-jam (we got toast-butter-jam). I grabbed a few words of loud conversation the men are into and one of them was, "Merci." "French," I told my husband, assuming they're Algerian. "Nope, it's a Middle-Eastern language." Then my son babbled loudly and grabbed their attention. They looked adoringly at him. "Where are you from?" I asked. "Iran." I wished, "Salaam." They responded with, "Namaskar." From the Anzali port along the Caspian Sea, they'd come to Bhavnagar in Gujarat, India, most likely on a ship to be broken at Alang's famed shipbreaking yard. They'd followed a route that has been in existence for over 5000 years, we were to discover on our visit to Lothal, a Harappan (Indus Valley Civilization) port on the now silted-up region of the Gulf of #Cambay from where a collection of #Persian artefacts were discovered dating back to 2500 BCE.
#SailorsAndSeas #PersiaAndIndia #5000YearsOfTrade #IndiaAndIran #Bhavnagar #Gujarat #GulfOfKhambhat
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