Bohra Vads

The Bohra Vads — the old residential quarter of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community — are one of the most unusual streetscapes in Gujarat. The houses were built across eighteen neighbourhoods between roughly 1820 and 1930 by successful Bohra traders whose businesses took them abroad but whose hearts, and wallets, remained in Siddhpur. The result is a dense cluster of ornate wooden mansions with European-influenced facades: art nouveau detailing, neoclassical columns, and decorative plasterwork alongside traditional Indian carved woodwork and jharokha windows.

Because the families who built these houses have largely remained abroad, the streets are peculiarly quiet for an Indian town — almost like a film set between takes. Many houses stand empty or only intermittently occupied, which gives the neighbourhood an eerie, preserved quality. There is no formal entry or ticket; you simply walk the lanes. Locals are generally welcoming of respectful visitors, and some residents will invite you to see interiors if you ask politely.

things to do sight neighbourhood
A story
The Dawoodi Bohra merchants who built these mansions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were trading far from home — in East Africa, the Gulf, and South Asia — yet they sent their money back to Siddhpur to construct some of the most flamboyant domestic architecture in Gujarat. The facades are painted in pastels: pink, lilac, lime green, peach. The style is European neoclassical filtered through an Indian eye, with stuccoed pilasters, trellised balconies, and gabled rooflines that would not look entirely out of place in a provincial French town.