“Someone has planted marigolds in a row along the highway divider, and every single one of them is alive.”

The road from Bhuj takes about an hour if your driver doesn't stop for chai, which yours will, because the stall at the junction near Bhachau has a reputation. Anjar announces itself without fanfare — a few textile workshops, a petrol pump, a roundabout with a statue you can't quite identify from a moving car. The town sits in that strange middle ground of Kutch: not remote enough to feel like an expedition, not developed enough to have a coffee chain. Your phone shows a pin on a farm road south of town, past a cluster of newer buildings and a school where kids in uniforms are filing out at four in the afternoon. The gate appears before you expect it, set back from a road lined with neem trees, and the first thing you notice isn't the resort — it's the quiet. Not silence, exactly. Birds, a tractor somewhere distant, wind moving through dry grass. The kind of quiet that makes you realize how loud Bhuj was.

The Fern Royal Farm Resort sits on what was once agricultural land, and the bones of that origin show in the best possible way. The grounds sprawl more than they should for a property this size — pathways wind between landscaped gardens, a pool area, and open lawns where someone has strung lights between the trees for the golden hour crowd. It's the kind of place that photographs well at sunset, and the resort knows it. But the real draw isn't aesthetics. It's the breathing room. In a region where most accommodation clusters around Bhuj or the Rann, this place exists in the margins, and those margins have space.

Living in it

The rooms are clean, modern, and built for comfort rather than character — think solid beds, decent air conditioning, and tile floors that stay cool underfoot. The bathroom works without drama, hot water arrives within a minute, and the towels are thick enough. None of this sounds exciting, and that's the point. After a day crossing the salt flats or navigating the embroidery villages around Bhuj, what you want is a room that doesn't make you think. The balcony, though — that earns a second look. It faces the gardens, and in the early morning, before the staff starts setting up for breakfast, you can sit out there with a cup of chai and watch egrets pick their way across the lawn. I counted seven one morning, moving in a line like they had somewhere important to be.

The food deserves mention because in this part of Gujarat, your dining options outside the resort are limited to highway dhabas and a few local joints in Anjar town. The kitchen here leans Gujarati — theplas, kadhi, dal that's been simmered properly — with enough North Indian standards to keep everyone happy. The paneer tikka at dinner is better than it needs to be. Breakfast is a reliable spread: poha, upma, toast, eggs made to order, and a jalebi that arrives warm if you time it right. One night, the staff set up a small barbecue by the pool, and a family at the next table invited me to try their daughter's plate of grilled corn. She had doused it in lime and red chili powder and looked personally offended when I reached for the butter.

“Anjar doesn't try to be anything for tourists, which is exactly why it works as a place to stop.”

The pool is modest but clean, and on a hot afternoon it's the center of gravity. Families gather, kids cannonball, someone's uncle floats on his back reading a Gujarati newspaper he somehow keeps dry. The poolside loungers are the plastic variety — not exactly resort-catalogue material, but functional. The Wi-Fi works in the common areas and the room, though it stutters during peak evening hours when everyone is video-calling home. If you need to upload anything heavy, do it before dinner.

What the resort gets right is its relationship to the region. The staff can arrange day trips to the Rann of Kutch, to Mandvi's beach and shipbuilding yards, or to the craft villages of Ajrakhpur and Nirona — all within reasonable driving distance. Anjar itself has a modest old town with earthquake-rebuilt structures and a Friday market where you can buy block-printed fabric directly from artisans for a fraction of what it costs in Ahmedabad. Ask the front desk for directions to the Jesal-Toral shrine; the walk through town takes about twenty minutes and gives you a sense of daily life here — chai stalls, cycle repair shops, women in embroidered chaniya cholis walking with an ease that suggests they dress like this every day, not just for festivals.

The honest thing: the resort is on a farm road, and that means you need transport. There's no walkable neighborhood, no corner store for a midnight snack. If you don't have your own vehicle, you're relying on the resort to arrange a car or an auto-rickshaw into town. This isn't a dealbreaker — it's Kutch, and distances are part of the deal — but it means this place works best as a base camp, not a destination. Pack accordingly. Bring a book. Bring two.

Walking out

Leaving in the morning, the light is different than when you arrived. Softer, lower, catching the dust that the farm road kicks up behind the car. Anjar's outskirts look gentler at this hour — a man walking a buffalo along the shoulder, a woman hanging laundry on a line strung between two mango trees. At the highway junction, the chai stall is already open, and the same guy from two days ago nods like he remembers you. He probably doesn't. But the chai is the same — cardamom-heavy, too sweet, served in a glass so hot you have to hold it by the rim. The bus to Bhuj leaves from the stand in town every thirty minutes until noon. If you're driving toward Mandvi, take the road past the salt pans. You won't regret the detour.

Rooms at The Fern Royal Farm Resort start around 48 US$ a night, breakfast included. For what you get — the quiet, the grounds, a kitchen that takes dal seriously, and a base within striking distance of Kutch's best craft villages — it's a fair deal for a region where options thin out fast beyond Bhuj.