David's AW News: This Town Changed Everything

Greetings from India

Hope you are well.

Last week I was telling you about our whiskey drama and how India is not so bad these days. If you missed it you can catch up here.

We had made it to the city of Vadodara in Gujarat - a dry state from there our friend the mine owner picked us up and drove us to the famous gemstone artisan town Khambhat which is an unbelievably historic and otherworldly place.

Khambhat.. woah this place!

Not exactly on any tourist maps. No yoga cafés. No mountain views. Not even a proper hotel (We stayed just out of town at a highway stopover.). Sadly the sea coast silted up and the sea is 10 kilometers in the distance, but they still have a seaside promenade. Many ancient British buildings. And we were taken to a place of epic history totally abandoned.

The place is just heat, dust, narrow streets… and history that runs deep. The old town part still has tiny trading stores that look a hundred years old. We have several suppliers in this town, people we have worked with for many years, in two cases over two generations.  If you ever wondered why AW has the best value and range of gemstone products, this place is one of our "trade secrets".. whoops another secret I tell you about.

Once upon a time this was one of India’s great trading ports. The Gulf of Khambhat carried ships from Arabia, Africa, even Rome. Spices, silk, beads, ideas — all moving through this town long before the word “globalisation” was invented.

And stones.

Khambhat became famous for agate. Carnelian. Jasper. The earth here gives up these treasures, and for generations families have shaped them by hand. Not factories. Courtyard workshops. Fathers teaching sons. Now daughters too. The sound of cutting wheels, polishing drums, the rhythm of craft passed down quietly over centuries. Now the town imports gemstones from all over India, our friend the gemstone mine holder brings truck loads here.. right across India from Jharkhand.

There’s something very Ancient Wisdom about that.

You walk through the lanes and see rough stones in sacks on the floor. Dust everywhere. Then you see the finished pieces — spheres, palms, geodes — glowing like captured sunsets. Transformation. Raw to refined. Earth to the object of meaning.

But then our mines guy, told us about a place of astounding history. So special they made a famous movie about it.. maybe you have seen it. On the edge of town close to what would have been a beach in the old days..  He showed us an abandoned Cricket pitch and pavilion.

The pitch is overgrown, but the pavilion still stands.

In 1721, sailors of the East India Company played the game near Cambay (as Khambhat was then called), watched by locals and noted in the journals of Lieutenant Clement Downing — that seaside moment is often pointed to as the very first glimpse of the “gentleman’s game” in India.

Can you believe it!! We found the birth place of Cricket in India.. legend has it that the locals learned the game. A movie was made about it.  Lagaan — the epic, Oscar-nominated drama about a drought-ravaged Indian village in 1893, where farmers challenge British officers to a match of cricket to win relief from oppressive taxes. It captured the imagination of an entire nation around cricket as a symbol of resistance, unity and transformation.

It's a great movie! If you have never seen it I can highly recommend it.

And standing there — between the gemstone workshops and that forgotten cricket pavilion — you realise something beautiful.

In Khambhat, stones are shaped by hand, and games once shaped history. The British may have brought cricket, but India made it its own. Just like the earth gives up rough agate, and local hands turn it into something luminous.

That’s what we try to do at Ancient Wisdom.

Find the raw. Honour the story. Work with people who carry skill in their blood. Then send something meaningful back out into the world.

From dusty pitches to glowing spheres — it’s all part of the same journey.

And somehow, it feels like we’re still playing our part in a much older game.

Take care

More news next week..

David