NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 12:29 ET
- Motorists are using Gujarat’s newly built Ahmedabad–Dholera expressway ahead of a formal opening, local media reported.
- The route is cutting drive times from Ahmedabad to the Salangpur Hanumanji temple to about two hours, the report said.
- The corridor is part of a wider push to improve links to the Dholera Special Investment Region, a government-backed industrial hub.
Motorists in India’s Gujarat state have begun using the newly built Ahmedabad–Dholera expressway to cut travel time to the Salangpur Hanumanji temple, even though the corridor has not been formally inaugurated, local outlet DeshGujarat reported.
The early use matters because Gujarat is racing to add faster road links around Dholera, a planned industrial zone that state and federal authorities have promoted as a logistics and manufacturing hub. Better travel times can shift both freight routes and weekend pilgrimage traffic.
The expressway also feeds a busy year-end travel calendar. The Shree Kashtabhanjan Dev Hanumanji Mandir in Salangpur, a major pilgrimage site, continues to post daily “darshan” updates on its official website.
DeshGujarat said the corridor is a roughly 108-km project linking Ahmedabad’s Sardar Patel Ring Road to Adhelai village near Bhavnagar, running through the Dholera Smart City area.
Devotees traveling from Ahmedabad to Salangpur can now reach in about two hours via the new route, the report said, compared with longer drives on older roads.
Salangpur is in Barwala taluka of Botad district in Gujarat, according to the temple’s official site, which lists the shrine as Shree Kashtabhanjan Dev Hanumanji Mandir.
Local Gujarati outlets have also reported large gatherings around Dholera for the annual Bhadiyad Urs — a festival marking the death anniversary of a Sufi saint — which begins in late December.
DeshGujarat flagged that parts of the approach after the Hebatpur interchange are still narrow and potholed, a reminder that last-mile connections can blunt the benefit of new high-speed corridors.
In an October press release, India’s transport ministry said the National Highways Authority of India views the Ahmedabad–Dholera expressway as a “greenfield” project — built on a new alignment — intended to improve connectivity to the Dholera Special Investment Region.
The same release said the NHAI chairman’s Gujarat visit also reviewed other highway corridors, including stretches of NH-48 and the Vadodara–Mumbai Expressway, underscoring the broader push to improve the state’s freight and passenger links.
For Dholera, faster road access is central to the investment pitch, with the government tying the zone’s growth to new transport infrastructure and tighter links to Ahmedabad and coastal districts.
With motorists already testing the new route, attention is likely to stay on when authorities formally open the corridor and how quickly they address the remaining bottlenecks on connecting roads.
