My older one is eleven now, the younger one eight. Last December we did Rann of Kutch as a family during the Utsav and I will be honest, when my husband first suggested it, I was not sure. A white salt desert. Full-moon nights. Cultural shows. Three of those four things are not, on paper, what you would call kid-friendly. I had spent enough holidays watching my two children glaze over at folk dance performances at hotel lobbies to be cautious.
I was wrong to be cautious. They came back from the Rann talking about it for two weeks, drawing pictures of camels for the school art class, and asking my mother when we could go again. So I want to write this one for any family that is thinking of Kutch during the Utsav, especially Indian families with children between six and twelve, because there is a particular configuration that works and a particular one that does not.
The Utsav runs from November to February. The salt is the cleanest in December and January, when the post-monsoon water has fully receded and the surface is genuinely white and crystallised. Full-moon weekends are the most photogenic and the most crowded. We picked a non-full-moon week in late December, which I think was the right call with kids, because the Tent City was busy but not chaotic, and we got a tent in our preferred category without paying the peak surge.
Booking is the part that catches people out. We booked four months in advance. The Tent City has different tent categories, from basic non-AC to "premium" with attached toilets, geysers and electricity all day. With kids, do not save money on the tent category. Pay for the premium. The difference between a shared bathroom in a tent at six in the morning when your eight-year-old needs to wee, and an attached one with a working geyser, is not a luxury, it is the difference between a good morning and a bad one.
We flew Bangalore to Ahmedabad and then Ahmedabad to Bhuj. There is occasionally a direct Bangalore-Bhuj flight but the timings are awkward. From Bhuj it is about an hour and forty-five minutes by car to Dhordo where the Tent City sits. We reached around three in the afternoon, checked in, the kids ran across the central lawn to look at the cushioned bolster seating, and we had a late lunch at the dining tent.
The first sight of the white desert is in the evening, at sunset, the day you arrive. The Tent City runs a shuttle to the viewpoint, but we walked, twenty minutes across the salt flat, my older one running ahead and turning around to wave like she had discovered the place. The desert at golden hour is the photo moment of the trip. The salt is white-pink in that light, the sky is huge, the horizon is impossibly flat. My younger one sat down on the salt and ran his hand through it, expecting it to be soft like sand, and was very surprised by the crunchy texture. He kept saying "amma, it's like Maggi noodles before you cook them" which I am still not sure is true but he was very firm about.
The second day is the proper day. Morning circuit through the craft villages. We did three. Hodka, where the Mutwa community does the most intricate embroidery you can buy in India, mirrors and beads and threadwork. Bhirandiyara, which is a small village mainly famous for one mawa shop, where the milk is reduced for six hours in a big iron kadhai and then served warm in small steel bowls. My kids ate two bowls each. The owner refused payment for the second bowl. And Khavda, where the Khatri family is the only family left in India that practises Rogan art. The artist sat on the floor with us for forty minutes and painted a peacock with castor-oil-based paint, no pencil sketch, freehand, on a piece of black cotton. My older daughter has not stopped talking about him. We bought a small piece for two thousand which we have framed at home.
Afternoon back at the tent. Long lunch, the kids in the pool, my husband and I in the loungers with a book. This part is non-negotiable with children. Do not try to do morning and afternoon excursions both. You will pay for it at the cultural show that evening.
The cultural show at the Tent City is good. Folk music, Kutchi dance, sometimes a Sufi performance. We had been told kids would not engage. They engaged. My eight-year-old got up at the end and joined the dancers when they invited the audience, which is a memory I will keep for a long time. Dinner was a Rajasthani-Gujarati buffet under a long tent, dhokla and fafda and jalebi and bajra rotla, all the kid-friendly things. They ate three jalebis each. I gave up.
The night is what the trip is really for. After dinner, around nine, we took a camel cart out into the deeper parts of the salt, six hundred rupees per cart, about an hour. The desert under a near-full moon is silent in a way that does not exist in cities. You can hear the camel's hooves on the salt. No traffic, no aircraft, no music, no phone notification. We had told the kids in advance to switch off their tablets for the cart ride. They sat looking up at the sky and did not say anything for ten minutes. Then my younger one asked "is this what space looks like?" and my husband said "kind of, yes." We were all wearing jackets because the desert cools down very quickly at night, by ten o'clock it was eight degrees.
Day three was a slow morning, breakfast in the tent (room service, a kid request, indulged), checkout at eleven, and the drive back to Bhuj. In Bhuj we stopped at Aaina Mahal, the royal mirror palace, which is old and dusty and beautiful in an unrestored way. The kids liked the mirror work but only for about thirty minutes. The Kutch Museum has tribal artefacts and held their attention for about forty-five minutes, which is a museum win in my book. We skipped Bhujodi (the weaver village outside Bhuj) because by then the kids were tired, and we drove to the airport for the evening flight.
A few things I would tell another family. First, on cost, three nights at the premium Tent City for two adults and two kids, plus flights from Bangalore, came to around one lakh seventy-five thousand. Not cheap, but the meals are all included and the experience is genuinely once-in-a-lifetime. Second, on layers. December nights at the desert touch five to eight degrees. Carry proper jackets, not light shawls. Daytime is twenty to twenty-five degrees and t-shirt weather. The temperature change inside one day is the biggest packing challenge. Third, on food, vegetarian Gujarati and Jain is easy everywhere, both at the Tent City and the village stops. If you have a very fussy eater, the kids' buffet at the Tent City has plain dal, rice, paratha, and a small dessert station. Fourth, when you buy crafts, buy from the village artisans directly, not from the Bhuj market shops. The prices are better and the money goes to the maker.
One thing I will say about the planning. The Tent City books out four to six months in advance for peak weekends. We had asked around for help with the booking because the official portal was glitchy when we tried it. My husband called Mr. Dada Peer at our office (Oyster Holidays, which I work for, full disclosure) and he put us onto a contact in Bhuj who handled it in a day. I mention this not to slip in a sales pitch but because the booking process really is the hardest part of the Utsav for most families, and most people we meet had the same difficulty. If you can get a local contact to help, it saves a lot of frustration.
What the kids loved, in their own ranking. The camel cart at night. The Rogan artist painting the peacock. The full-moon-lit desert (silent, looking up, did not check anything). The three jalebis each. In that order.
What I will remember. The eight-year-old's face when he first sat down on the salt. The cultural show dancer who pulled my older daughter onto the stage. The Rogan artist refusing extra payment when we tipped beyond the asking price. And the silence on the camel cart that I have not quite been able to get back to since.
The Rann is one of those places that looks photogenic in the photos and works in person. Three nights, premium tent, the village circuit, the night camel ride, was the most memorable winter trip we have done as a family in years.