08-20 Oct: Chandigarh and Amritsar (Part 1)

I was reading through some of Paige’s travel blogs (who I’d met in Abanheri a few weeks ago) and really enjoyed all the small details of Indian life she’d picked up and put across from food to details of roadside life. Then I kicked myself because I’ve been on the go for months and completely missed the chance to put across anything like that that really gives a sense of place from the minutiae of daily life. 

Then I saw her description of adventurer and this and that which gives pause for thought. I’d agree that booking onto an Exodus bus tour in Asia is something brilliant to do and certainly adventurous, but does a bus tour with all accommodation, food, tour guiding and generally everything apart from deciding where to point a camera really get you the Scouting badge of an adventurer? Possibly it does, however I’m just using it as a point to excuse my at times near total lack of interesting notes about the places I’ve been to in favour of blander “well it was a long day in the saddle” twaddle. There are times when it would feel great to be chauffeured on a bus to a site, dropped off for 20 minutes, snap some photos, reloaded, type up some notes on the bus ride, then fed and hotelled for the night. The point is when I get to type these updates, it’s invariably at the end of a few days having seen so much, but also at the end of several scorching days battling through you-would-never-believe traffic to find somewhere to stay before the ‘you can never let it happen’ scenario of being stuck on the roads after dark.

Daily traffic grind, hour after hour!

So anyway... Chandigarh has the benefit of being one of the last major cities you’ll come to in north west India, so to some degree, all roads head there which made for a long but reasonably straight forward navigation-wise two-day ride there from Nainital. Ever optimistic I’d hoped to do it in one day, but here 250-300kms is about the limit you can make in a day simply because of endless congestion reducing average speeds to a touch over 30miles an hour (50km/h) if you’re lucky. 

I’d planned to stop at Rishikesh on the way as a friend Stuart from work had mentioned it, but seeing an  unexceptional town full of yoga places, ashrams and spiritualists, decided it really wasn’t for me and ploughed on to fortunately find a roadside motel as the sun was setting.

Arriving in Chandigarh the next day was such a pleasant surprise. Set on a rigid numbered grid system, the city is a breeze to ride round and find exactly where you need to be simply by counting off the 1,200x800m grid squares as you ride Milton-Keynes like from roundabout to roundabout. 

Chandigarh's grid squares

Chandigarh is a relatively new city, commissioned in the 50’s after the British helped Unified India split into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Punjab and Haryana provinces lost their capital Lahore to newly formed Pakistan, so Chandigarh was commissioned as a new shared capital for the two Indian provinces.  A huge design team led by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, famed for massive schemes best understood as ‘monsterous 60s crap flatbocks’ to most people. Schemes like this rarely work in Europe because they look too perfect on paper, you live here, work over there, go here for leisure and draw some neat roads between the zones and bingo. Build Le Corbusier’s ville de trois millions d’habitants and the trois millions would only pee in the stairwells and spray graffiti, but in India, you’ll end up with ten million people squished in and the whole ‘plan’ takes a back seat as daily life over-comes and dominates it in a way it never could in the west. 

Most buildings in India look as if someone found a secret Ugly command in AutoCAD - Ctrl-Alt-Shift-U - and kept hitting it repeatedly. Chandigarh though has some genuine interest with state buildings in particular stunning examples of ‘truth to material’ modernism (picture from the internet as I caught a cold and couldn’t face hiking over there sadly!!). Unlike most of the rest of India where you find an amazing sight in the middle of chaos and mess, Chandigarh is a lot more even, no incredible world heritage spectacles, but instead a clean, green city with a walkable city centre and some excellent coffee bars and cafes. 

Chandigarh theatre

Neat, clean streets - a rare sight here

The rose garden (sadly out of season)

Secretariat building (pic from the internet)

So after a few days looking round various sites including Nek Chand’s brilliant rock garden (a bit like the forbidden corner but more arts and crafts) with everything made from recycled waste I actually felt really relaxed. In a city that’s a doddle to find your way round, with little hassle from streetside vendors, lots of greenery and parks it’s easy to get comfortable, but I was there for a reason, to grab some tickets for the forthcoming one day international cricket match between India and England. 

Nek Chand's fantasy rock garden

Sculptures in Nek Chand's fantasy rock garden

Waterscape in Nek Chand's garden

 After a long wait hearing they were on sale on either the 11^th, 12^th, 13^th or 15^th, it turned out the 15^th was the big day. Packing my kit and riding down to the PCA stadium across town, I bagged a ticket and set off for a couple of days in Amritsar for a change of scenery and to tick off a final big sight of my time in India – the Golden Temple.