Bharuch formerly known as Broach is a city at the mouth of the river Narmada in Gujarat in western India. Bharuch is the administrative headquarters of Bharuch District and is a municipality of about 370,000 inhabitants. Being one of the biggest industrial areas including Ankleshwar GIDC, it is at times referred as the chemical capital of India.
The city of Bharuch and its surroundings have been settled since times of antiquity. It was a ship building centre and sea port in the pre-compass coastal trading routes to points West, perhaps as far back as the days of the Pharaohs. The route made use of the regular and predictable monsoon winds or galleys. Many goods from the Far East were shipped there during the annual monsoon winds, making it a terminus for several key land-sea trade routes. Bharuch was known to the Greeks, the various Persian Empires, in the Roman Republic and Empire, and in other Western centres of civilisation through the end of the European Middle Ages.
