Gurdwara Pehli Patshahi, Lakhpatਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਪਹਿਲੀ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ, ਲੱਖਪਤ

Gurdwara Pehli Patshahi, known across Kutch as Lakhpat Gurdwara Sahib, stands inside the fort walls of Lakhpat, a near deserted port town in Kutch district, Gujarat, close to the Pakistan border. Its name means the Gurdwara of the First Master, and it preserves the memory of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, who stayed in the town on his journeys towards Mecca in the early 1500s. A modest house of worship built in the early 1800s, holding relics tradition links to the Guru himself, it later won a UNESCO Asia Pacific heritage award for the community led rescue that restored it after earthquake damage. Few shrines on any list of gurdwaras in India join Sikh memory, desert geography and award winning conservation as tightly as this one.

What is Gurdwara Pehli Patshahi, Lakhpat?

It is a Sikh place of worship in Lakhpat town, Kutch district, Gujarat, and a State Protected Monument of the Gujarat archaeology department, listed as S GJ 65. The gurdwara marks the house where tradition says Guru Nanak Dev Ji stayed as a guest, and it keeps objects associated with him: wooden footwear, a palkhi or cradle, manuscripts and the markings of two heads of the Udasi order. First cared for by the Udasi sect, it is now looked after by the local Sikh community together with Gurdwara Shri Guru Nanak Singh Sabha of Gandhidham, the port town about 170 kilometres away where most of Kutch's Sikhs live.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji at Lakhpat: the road to Mecca

Tradition places Guru Nanak Dev Ji at Lakhpat twice: during his second udasi, or missionary journey, dated 1506 to 1513, and again during his fourth udasi, dated 1519 to 1521, when he was travelling west towards Mecca. The visit most strongly attached to this site is the fourth journey one, on the road to Mecca and Medina. From Lakhpat, accounts say, the Guru crossed to Sonmiani port in Sind to continue that journey. In the early nineteenth century the descendants of his host raised a gurdwara on the site to keep the memory, and a large grant of land was given with it, whose farm income paid for the shrine's upkeep and for feeding and housing visitors, as it long continued to do.

A port town that the river left behind

The quiet around the gurdwara is part of its story. In the sixteenth century Lakhpat, then counted part of Sind and known as Basta Bander, was a busy port and a rich rice growing town. An earthquake in 1819 changed the country: the river that fed the port shifted away, the fields dried, and trade left with the water. The fortified town emptied over the following generations, leaving its great walls around a handful of homes, temples and this gurdwara. Pilgrims who make the long desert drive today step into a settlement that feels held in the early 1800s, which is exactly the age of the building they have come to see.

What relics are kept at Lakhpat?

The gurdwara preserves a small group of objects that draw most visitors. Chief among them are the charan paduka, wooden footwear or khadava believed to have belonged to Guru Nanak Dev Ji, and a decoratively carved wooden palkhi, a cradle or swing like seat, painted with floral work. Manuscripts are kept here as well, together with markings associated with two important heads of the Udasi sect, the order founded in the Guru's family line that long served this shrine. The relics are shown to visitors by the caretakers, and they explain why this remote shrine matters far beyond its small local sangat.

How was the gurdwara saved after the earthquake?

Time, salt air and disasters had worn the building long before help came. A cyclone in 1998 and the great Kutch earthquake of January 2001 badly damaged the two hundred year old structure. The conservation that followed became a model of its kind. The Cultural Resources Conservation Initiative led the work, with funding from the Archaeological Survey of India and support from the state archaeology department, the United Nations Development Programme and United Nations Volunteers. Between February and September 2003, craftspeople stripped away cement plasters that trapped damp, repaired limestone and red sandstone in lime mortar as the original builders had, cleaned enamel paint from carved woodwork, and restored the painted wooden swing. Local residents, most of them not Sikhs, worked on the restoration of their neighbours' shrine. In 2004 UNESCO gave the project its Asia Pacific Award of Distinction for conservation, praising the way technical care and community participation were joined. The building itself rewards a slow look: a courtyard complex with a double storey gateway and pointed arch on the west, projecting carved stone balconies, perforated stone panels and sloping tiled roofs.

Festivals and visiting today

The year's great gathering is Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Gurpurab, celebrated at Lakhpat over three days, 23 to 25 December, drawing devotees from Gandhidham and across Kutch to a town that otherwise sees few crowds; in December 2021 the celebrations drew a video address from India's prime minister. Extensions in recent decades have added a yatri niwas for pilgrims, a langar hall and a diwan hall, so the shrine can receive the visitors its fame brings. As at every gurdwara, langar is served to all who come, in a town where the Sikh community is tiny and the welcome is a shared local pride.

How do I reach Lakhpat?

Lakhpat lies about 170 kilometres from Gandhidham, the railhead and port town for this corner of Kutch, and the journey is by road through the district's dry north west. Visitors usually base themselves in Gandhidham or Bhuj side towns and drive in for the day, combining the gurdwara with the fort walls of Lakhpat itself. About 20 kilometres away, the village of Korini keeps a large sarovar also linked in local memory to Guru Nanak Dev Ji's passage through the region. Carry water and plan fuel and food stops: services inside the fort town are minimal, and that remoteness, met by the caretakers' hospitality, is part of what pilgrims remember.