Chandigharh - Punjab

We took the bus from jaipur at about 2.30 in the afternoon to get to Chandigarh and it wasn't too bad a journey actually,quite interesting watching the landscape changes in between the desert world of rajasthan and entering the 'bread basket of India',Punjab with its enormous trucks and huge fields of wheat. the amount of greenery increases and its a lot easier on the eye,there's a calming effect as we drive into the city of Chandigarh but i guess its mainly due to the more organised way of driving that the people of the city use."they actually obey traffic lights here!" i exclaimed to Rachel as we stopped for the tenth time one one street,that and they beep their horn less around(the beeping everywhere else had started to become a background noise we were used to). the bus station there was one of the best we've come across,cleaner than any other and more organised than all the rest.they had people to organise the rickshaws for us as well and we knew we were re-affirmed about our entry into Punjab by the occasional shouts of 'phand-chod' all around as the Punjabi boys were playfully talking to their friends.
the taxi to the hotel took a bit of time as the driver got himself lost(the address we were given,like most addresses in India use a specific landmark to identify their position,most likely a big building known to all of a statue of some sort,and with India,the bigger the better,so they decide to put landmarks that are known to more people but not necessarily close to them. i.e like saying i live close to the kl twin towers...even thou my actual home is about 20 minutes away...) but we eventually found ourselves at our hotel - the hotel diamond plaza,which was by far the most posh room we've had on the trip.as good as a decent 3-4 star hotel back home and for less than 1/10th the price of course, but as it was somewhere in the afternoon we decided to get a bit of a rest before continuing our journey.in the evening we read our 'bible' the lonely planet and came to the conclusion that other than offices and government buildings, there wasn't much else to see in Chandigarh besides a rock garden...so the plan was to get our tickets out of here for our next destination in Punjab - Amritsar the home of the Golden Temple. so we asked around and the hotel guys directed us to a street about a block from where we were to get our tickets, see Chandigarh, being the most organised city in India, was designed by an eccentric Swiss architect, Le corbusier, who made the entire place in a perfect grid system where each block was about 1km by 1km and all the government blocks in one area,entertainment in another,transportation in another and parks and residential areas in another.in between the blocks there are roundabouts and everything is labeled by sectors,so we stayed in sector 22 and the ticketing office was on the other side of it,so we caught a rickshaw and sorted our tickets to Amritsar out before dinner.for dinner we decided to try a Chinese restaurant nearby which was recommended by lonely planet,according to Rachel, the food has put her off from eating Chinese food in India completely,but for me it wasn't anything like Chinese so it was like eating a completely new type of cuisines, the spring roles came and they were served with an entire bowl of sauce,so we've got these tiny spring roles yeah,and a huge bowl of sauce which ended up becoming a gravy for my rice,which was basmati rice BTW.all in all the food wasn't too bad and we came away learning a bit more about the Indian culture.
the next morning we set off for the rock garden of nek chand.back in the day there was this dude, nek chand, who went around collecting rubbish and broken bits of things,like cups and plates and bangles and stuff...he made little statues of people and cows and things like that.he then put them all around his hut,just on the outskirts of the city centre,then one day as some local officials were walking around,they stumbled across all these statues and stuff right,so they decided to give nak chand some funding,some workers and 22acres of land to pursue his dream of building this fairytale /Alice in wonderland type park,which now has become the 2nd most visited attraction in India. so that means the Taj Mahal,the most famous erection man has made for a woman, has a rock garden as its next rival. pretty cool huh, so we decided to see it. it cost 10 rupees to get in...about 30NZ cents and 80+Malaysian cents, and you have to walk around windy and very interesting looking rock formations,statues and fountains and waterfalls.very interesting the whole thing and people have weddings and school functions in the middle.it was very interesting to see young Punjabi boys running around playing and looking at the Punjabi girls posing for photographs by the waterfalls. Rachel has put some photos of her and i at one of the waterfalls in the last post as well.
we then made our way to sector 17,where the shopping was.just entering the sector and looking at all the big brands,cars and bling the Punjabi's were wearing made it seem like we entered the most posh place of Punjab.because it was a Saturday everyone was out in their best,and the shops all stocked the best brands too.we ate some food and were off to the bus station.

Next Stop - Amritsar :D