“You’ll be able to smell it,” is the constant refrain when we ask for directions to Vapi, an industrial town sitting on the southern end of the country’s Golden Corridor, a 400-km industrial belt in Gujarat. To reach this city in Valsad district, we travel on National Highway 8 which stretches from Mumbai to Surat. The highway itself is a joy to drive on, seeming to deliver the promise of Narendra Modi’s ‘Vibrant Gujarat’. But as Vapi approaches, more than the highway signboards marking distances, it’s the afore-mentioned smell, a pungent odour, that lets us know we are nearing our destination.