Some destinations are worth the distance simply because nothing photographs the scale of them until you're standing underneath. Kevadia, a small town in Gujarat's Narmada district, is one of those places — home to the Statue of Unity, a 182-metre bronze-clad statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that is, as of writing, the tallest statue in the world. Even from the approach road, well before the toll gates and the ticket counters, the statue is visible over the hills, and it only gets more disorienting in scale as you get closer.

The statue itself sits on a purpose-built island in the Sardar Sarovar Dam reservoir on the Narmada river, and the dam is very much part of the experience rather than a footnote — the reservoir stretches out on either side, and the viewing gallery inside the statue (reached by a high-speed lift) looks straight down the length of it. It's worth timing the visit for late afternoon if you can; the light on the water and the surrounding Satpura and Vindhya hills is considerably better than the midday glare.

A short distance from the statue is the Jungle Safari Park, easily recognisable from a distance by its main building, which is shaped like a giant eagle with outstretched wings — an unusual, striking piece of architecture that houses the entrance and interpretation areas before the safari trail itself. The safari is a proper half-day activity on its own, with enclosures for a wide range of Indian wildlife laid out across rolling, well-maintained grounds, and it's a good complement to the statue if you're not in a rush.

One of the quieter, more affecting parts of the complex is a memorial near the statue base where a single footprint is preserved under glass — a small, understated marker compared to the scale of everything around it, but the kind of detail that stays with you longer than the big photographs do. Nearby, the Valley of Flowers area (landscaped gardens laid out along the riverbank, distinct from the more famous Uttarakhand valley of the same name) offers a genuinely pleasant, unhurried walk after a day of sightseeing that otherwise involves a fair amount of queuing and walking on hard pathways.

Kevadia is a long way from Bengaluru — well over a thousand kilometres by road — so this isn't a weekend dash for most South Indian travellers; it's the kind of trip that makes more sense as a flight into Ahmedabad or Vadodara followed by a road transfer, or folded into a longer Gujarat itinerary. For groups planning the outstation leg of a trip like this, or any long-distance chauffeur-driven journey across state lines, that's exactly the kind of trip Sushi Travels' outstation and round-trip car rental service is built around — a private vehicle and driver for the parts of the journey within driving range, so the group isn't juggling logistics on top of sightseeing.

If Kevadia is on your list, our honest advice is to give it a full day and not try to combine it with too much else on the same date — the statue viewing gallery, the safari park, and the gardens are each worth unhurried time, and the site rewards patience over a rushed checklist visit.