Finally, I got the opportunity to visit the statue of unity on 26 May, 2019. This is must visit place in India. Recently a statue of unity has entered into prestigious world architecture news award.
We started our journey from Vadodara-dabhoi road.
Vadodara -Dabhoi -Statue of Unity Road:
We started our journey from Vadodara and with the help of google baba we got the right track! Road to the statue is awesome! It is a state highway number 63. We were into car (volkswagen polo) and of 100 Kmph we felt that it was sailing on smooth water! Believe me it was a very smooth sail. I must congratulate to the Gujarat state road department to build such a nice road.
(Image courtesy: Ram Vala)
We reached at the statue of unity at around 10:45 AM.
Attraction of this area:
- Statue of unity
- Kevadiya colony
- Valley of flower
- Sardar sarovar dam
Private vehicle parking pass
We have our own car and I thought that we can drive through the saradar sarvoar dam, but the bus only carries through the dam site according to the officials of the statue of unity. Hence we have dropped our plan to take our vehicle.
The rate of parking pass is Rs 150/ per car – it includes accessibility towards the statue of unity.
We parked our car in the parking area of main bus station and it has no charge for parking.
Unfortunately the fortune!
When we reached at around 10:45 AM, the site has lots of crowds, the day is sunday, but according to local official today’s crowd was highest crowd ever. We required to stand in long queue to collect tickets, and we got our turn after almost 1.5 hour.
In this scorching heat we stood in this queue and during this stand we almost drunk 2 ltr of cold drinks!
Hence this is like we were unfortunate as that day crowd was very high in number, but for statue of unity we are fortune! Yay!
Ticket rates
| Ticket type | Rate/Person | What you can see? |
| Entry | Child – Rs 60
Adult – Rs 120 |
Feet of sardar statue, Valley of flower, Museum and audio visual gallery, sardar sarovar dam. |
| Viewing gallery | Child -Rs 200
Adult – Rs 350 |
Main Viewing gallery, Feet of sardar statue, Valley of flower, Museum and audio visual gallery, sardar sarovar dam. |
| Bus ticket
(22 km ride) |
Rs 30 for all | Bus travels through total 22 kms from main station to view point of dam site. |
| Helicopter | Rs 2900/ | This is 10 minute ride of entire area where statue of unity and sardar sarovar dam situated |
| Express entry | Rs 1000/ | This is privilege entry everywhere, you can bypass long quess and waiting areas! |
The daily limit of the main viewing gallery is 7000 people.
But on that day, 26th May, limit was fulfilled at 11 O’clock while we have just stood in the queue to collect tickets for the main viewing gallery, We had to take ticket for entry only because viewing gallery tickets were sold out!, our enthusiasm was dropped but anyway we had to see
What a luck! 🙁
After a long queue I reached to collect the tickets, the total amount for entry ticket including bus ride is Rs 870 for seven persons (4 adults and 3 children) and I gave Rs 2000 note to ticket operator and believe me they didn’t have change! What a mismanagement!
Plus, the staff is very novice in performing of the task of ticketing, I was wondering that such international level destination having a such novice staff member!
Queue at the Ticket window at the bus station
Buses: Almost all are Volvo buses.
Buses are nice, almost all are Volvo buses with good suspension and large windows, they are very comfortable.
The route
The Gigantic scene!
After long queue and waiting for almost 2 hours, as we had to stand in a queue at statue of unity as we already had stood for 1.5 hour at the main bus station.
And finally, Giant was in front of my eye! What a sight.
The distance from the main entry to the statue is about 300 meters. There is another ticket window to purchase tickets apart from ticket window at the main bus station.
Museum & audio visual gallery:
The entry! – Sardar’s large sculpture is inviting us.
(Image courtesy: Ram Vala)
Base of statue consists of museums and theater. Theater has a few minutes audio -visual on the life of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. I watched this small documentary film on Sardar and it is wonderful and one should watch if you visit this place.
There are other audio and visual kiosks highlights life of Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel.
The foot of Giant:
(Image courtesy: Ram Vala)
As earlier mentioned, all the tickets of the viewing gallery were sold out, we have to see foot view. As you can see in the image, the giant foot is visible.
Talking with cloud:
(Image courtesy: Ram Vala)
Look at the standing of Sardar! He is taking with clouds! It is amazing to watch him from his feet. I took this photo from the base terrace of the statue. Look at the round shape god like aura! I felt that I was at God’s abode and he was blessing me!
Valley of flower
From Statue of unity, we moved ahead towards valley of flower. We had to pick up bus and that day it was very long queues to pick up, we got our bus after 1.5 hours of wait.
Valley of flower is still in developing phase, so as per name suggest you would not get view of plenty of flowers and valley but you get a simple garden like look only.
You can skip this place if you have do not time, in our tour we are running out of time hence we skipped this place.
Sardar sarovar Dam view
Sardar dam is one of the site to watch, after skipping valley of flower we moved towards sardar sarovar dam site. We visited this region in hot summer hence we were not fortunate enough to see green lush landscape and dam full of water. But still it is a site to watch. Sardar Sarovar dam site is india’s one of the biggest dam site.
End of journey
After delightful watch of dam site, we returned to volvo bus to main bus station. At main bus station parking we parked our car and we returned to our car and started our journey towards vadodara city.
My Observation on crowd management: Worst experience!
I wish to share our experience of crowd management by staff of statue of unity.
- There was no proper security person to handle large crowded queues.
- Some people trying to bypass queues and to restrict them, nobody was there for security. We experienced such an accident as well where groups of people got engaged in heavy exchanges of words!
- They have 24 buses, they were using the 1 bus at a time for pick up, for such a large crowd they have to put some more buses.
- I feel that they are not ready for any crisis management.
- We almost stood totally for 3 hours in our journey which was a totally time waste, and this all due to bad management of staff of statue of unity.
Overall it was satisfying journey, I can understand that it is still in development phase so staff and management are in learning phase but they require to learn quickly because statue of unity is not a national attraction but it is international attraction and we should not lose this postion.
Share your experience if you visited statue of unity.
