Friday, November 24 Chandigarh

It was dark when I took the Metro to the bus station at Kashmere Gate. The five-hour ride to Chandigarh was cold and foggy. Plus, I have a cold, for the first time in India. It was along the main road (Grand Trunk Road, or National Highway 1) so modern resorts and roadside dhabas lined the straightaway. Alongside us were many cars driving with luggage marked “LHR”, clearly NRI’s coming back home to Punjab from the UK or US, probably arriving at 5am in Delhi, just like my flight here. As we crossed the Haryana border into Punjab, you could immediately tell you had entered the Punjab. Men exclusively wore turbans, I recognized all the names on shops from friends back home; Malhotra, Gil, Deep, Dhillon, Singh, Grewal, Kumar, Pawan, and all the cars had the Sikh sword emblem on them. The fertile fields of Punjab gave way to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a Union Territory under federal jurisdiction, but is the capital of Punjab and Haryana. It is India’s cleanest, greenest, and richest city. It’s also the country’s first planned city, built by architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s. It was clear that the city was planned; all streets are broad and intersect at right angles, never ending or turning. There is an abundance of money, space, trees, garbage cans, banks, English, modern concrete buildings, and nice cars. I saw no cows, litter, or beggars. I felt like I was in the United States. Chandigarh’s grid-like design is extremely functional, simple, and efficient. However, it’s confusing as hell because all the streets and blocks look identical. We got to the bus station around noon and I went across the street to eat a thali, which I expected to be good considering it’s Punjab, but it was absolutely horrible, so I had to go to another restaurant which was also disappointing. I hung out in Sector 17 (of the forty city blocks, but it sounds like a Star Trek ship or a penal code), the main block in the city. There is a huge mall there called, well, The Mall, with large expanses of open pavement for pedstrians and for Sikh drivers to park their beloved automobiles. Upscale shops and eateries surrounded the courtyards, and it seems people in Punjab, and Chandigarh especially, are mostly well-off. I caught a double-decker city sightseeing bus. On the way I met a Sikh NRI (born in Canada, wears a turban and long beard) named Gurpreet, and we ended up talking and hanging out the whole time. It’s actually really funny because he knows kitchen Punjabi, but I know Hindi better than him, and even though he’s first-generation and has been to India multiple times, I know more about India, and he was taking my travel advice. Weird! We went to a museum, which was okay. Then we visited the recently-innaugurated Indian war memorial, basically a copy of the Vietnam memorial, with the names of all the soldiers who died fighting for India. The interesting part was that 75% of the surnames were ‘Singh’, and 90% of the regiments were in Kashmir. After that we went to the Fantasy Rock Garden by artist Nek Chand. Tons of Punjabi schoolboys in skullcaps with little buns on top were goofing around. The rock garden had an intricate series of maze-like passageways leading to waterfalls, little rooms, and fields of creepy-looking figurines. It would have made a good Doom level. The whole garden was made of recycled trash and natural elements. Statues were made of bangles, walls made of concrete and ceramic toilets, and sculptures made of old electrical wires. It was all modern and really experimental, but it was cool he was inspired by waste material and utilized it to create something beautiful. It reminded me of Gaudi’s Park Guell in Barcelona. There was a big open square at the end, with rides, carnival games, food, camel rides, swings, and a Bhangra dance stage that a huge group of dorky college students were enjoying. The bus next took us to Sukhna Lake, which was a lakefront on a man-made lake with paddleboats, food, and shopping. You could sense the cosmopolitancy and affluence, and modernization of this city, as people jogged in Spandex, talked on their cell phones in English, and cuddled. The last stop was the rose garden, which was an open grass field with, well, roses, and windy paths with weird-looking garbage cans and park benches. It got dark and really cold, so Gurpreet and I went to coffee and dinner at Sagar Ratna, a high-quality North Indian restaurant chain. Then we walked around and looked at this creepy street fair with Disney-type characters that kept following the hot girls. Then we went to a Gurudwara, with music playing in the background. Anyone can stay in a Gurudwara, the Sikhs want to accept all people. He let me crash in his room for the night. It was a pretty nice room, with a double bed and communal bathrooms. He had me write a page in his journal, so I gave him some travel tips, and then this one guy came in and asked Gurpreet to send in a copy of his passport to Canadian immigration. Despite it being freezing, it was okay.