At 6 in the morning the band of marchers left Delad for the village of Chhaprabhatha. They reached Chhaprabhatha at 8.30. Bapu was hosted by the leader of the village in his house Prabudas Bhai and Ranchod Bhai and rest of the marchers took shelter in the compound of the village temple. Being close to Surat, since this morning several special trains had arrived at Surat disgorging hundreds of thousands of people coming to welcome Bapu and to meet him. A Special train from Ahmedabad carrying textile mill owners and their families numbering 250 had arrived in Surat that morning. They all got into a fleet of cars and reached Chhaprabhatha to meet Bapu. The afternoon meeting was organized in a big mango orchard, over 6000 people gathered to listen to Bapu. There was a rumor that young volunteers had collected several 100 sacks full of salt from the coastal villages around Dandi, after Bapu broke the salt law they would start selling and distributing that salt all over Gujarat. It was believed several consignments of Dandi salt had reached Ahmedabad too. But there was no official confirmation of either story.
At 6 O’clock Bapu and his group of volunteers left Chhaprabhatha to march to Surat. The entire route was packed with people. Bapu entered Surat by crossing the Tapti river via the walk path of the railway bridge. Passengers in the passing trains leaned out of the windows to catch a glimpse of the Mahatma and his band of marchers. When Bapu reached Surat, there were more than 5000 people marching with him. It felt as if the entire population of Surat had gathered on the river bank of Tapti to welcome their beloved leader and his band of satyagrahis. It was an unprecedented occurrence, people had climbed onto terrace and roofs trees and even electrical poles, women were hanging out of balconies and windows, everywhere the eye travelled there was a packed crowd of people. On four occasions on this tour, first when Bapu started from Ahmedabad, the gathering of people on the banks of Sabarmati, second when he reached Nadiad and Anand the crowds welcoming him, third when he crossed the Narmada, the gathering of people on both its banks, and now when he crossed the Tapti at Surat, the people waiting for him on other bank, These scenes would be forever written in words of gold in the history of the freedom movement. Surat had been cleaned and the route of the march through the city had been beautifully decorated, the National Flag was flapping everywhere and the citizens of Surat had flooded the streets just to see their beloved leader walk by. In surat the camp site was far from the place where Bapu’s evening public meeting was organized on the banks of the Tapti. So he was ferried from the campsite to the public meeting by a car. But all the four routes decided to take him there were jammed by an unending river of people and vehicles finally he was driven to the venue after a huge detour. A huge crowd had gathered on the banks of the Tapti, to listen to the leader by the time the meeting was scheduled to start, the crowd had swollen to hundreds of thousands of people, an estimate pegged the number at 500 thousand. When Bapu climbed on to the stage, the slogans of ‘Mahatma Gandhi zindabad!’ and ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ rent the air the sloganeering went on and on for 45 minutes till Bapu threatened to leave without speaking if they didn't quiet and down. Bapu had reached the venue at 9 O’clock sharp. Mill owners of Ahmedabad and Bombay were also at the venue to hear his speech Bapu thanked them for their support. Addressing the people he said, ‘I have been requested to ease the boycott of British goods. I must allow them to import goods from Japan. But that's wrong. Without the adoption of khadi, the boycott movement will never succeed. Khadi is the cloth of poor and only Khadi will empower the poor to come out of poverty and become self-reliant’. Surat was generous in its gifts and by the end of the public meeting, over 6 to 7 thousand rupees were donated to the cause of freedom. Then the meeting ended and thus after a march and address to the mammoth public rally finally Bapu was driven back to the camp and he rested. What a day it had been.