Day 51 (Sun 27 Aug) - Chandigarh
After the disappointing day the day before, we weren't holding out much hope for the rest of Chandigarh. With heavy misgivings we headed off in search of the rose garden.
When we finally found it we were pleasantly surprised. Although the roses were not in bloom it was a beautiful park and it even had a fountain. We settled ourselves under a tree and enjoyed watching the locals strolling around the park.
Later in the afternoon we thought we should do some more exploring so we headed off towards Nek Chand Fantasy Rock Garden. When we arrived we witnessed our first encounter with bribery. A school teacher (of all people)was trying to bribe the lady at the entrance with a handful of notes to get some twenty children in without buying tickets, but she refused, which made us laugh as he made a right fool of himself.
The Rock Garden was an amazing, magical place. You followed a maze of rock formations where you stumbled across human and animal figures made out of junk and stunning water features. It must have taken the artist years to create such a place. We certainly felt we were somewhere between "The Lost World" and "Tomb Raider" ( [1], [2], [3] ) . At the end of the garden there was an amusement area, where there were massive swings. Jo couldn't resist a ride, along with most of the other women in the garden.
Once we left the Rock Garden we were mobbed by rickshaw cyclists. We agreed a price and rode back to the hotel in the warm evening along wide tree lined avenues with large tidy houses.
Obviously there aren't a lot of white people in Chandigarh as some other cyclists nearly fell off their cycles looking at Jo.
We were quite tired by the time we got back to our hotel, so we simply ate in the hotel restaurant. We had a delicious vegetarian Thali, which is two vegetable dishes, dahl, chapatis, rice, salad and yoghurt.
When we finally found it we were pleasantly surprised. Although the roses were not in bloom it was a beautiful park and it even had a fountain. We settled ourselves under a tree and enjoyed watching the locals strolling around the park.
Later in the afternoon we thought we should do some more exploring so we headed off towards Nek Chand Fantasy Rock Garden. When we arrived we witnessed our first encounter with bribery. A school teacher (of all people)was trying to bribe the lady at the entrance with a handful of notes to get some twenty children in without buying tickets, but she refused, which made us laugh as he made a right fool of himself.
The Rock Garden was an amazing, magical place. You followed a maze of rock formations where you stumbled across human and animal figures made out of junk and stunning water features. It must have taken the artist years to create such a place. We certainly felt we were somewhere between "The Lost World" and "Tomb Raider" ( [1], [2], [3] ) . At the end of the garden there was an amusement area, where there were massive swings. Jo couldn't resist a ride, along with most of the other women in the garden.
Once we left the Rock Garden we were mobbed by rickshaw cyclists. We agreed a price and rode back to the hotel in the warm evening along wide tree lined avenues with large tidy houses.
Obviously there aren't a lot of white people in Chandigarh as some other cyclists nearly fell off their cycles looking at Jo.
We were quite tired by the time we got back to our hotel, so we simply ate in the hotel restaurant. We had a delicious vegetarian Thali, which is two vegetable dishes, dahl, chapatis, rice, salad and yoghurt.
posted by Jo and Sarb at
8/27/2006 09:32:00 am
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