Bharuch , About this sound pronunciation (help·info)(Gujarati: ભરૂચ), also known as Broach, in Gujarat is situated at the mouth of the river Narmada. Bharuch is the administrative headquarters of Bharuch District and a municipality of about 3,70,000 inhabitants.
The city of Bharuch and its surrounds has been settled since far back into antiquity and was a ship building center and sea port in the pre-compass coastal trading routes to points West, perhaps as far back as the days of the Pharaohs, which utilized the regular and predictable Monsoon winds or galleys. Many goods from the Far East (the famed Spice and Silk trade) were trans-shipped there for 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 centers of civilization through the end of the European Middle Ages.