Day 38 to 42 (Mar 8-12) - Chandigarh & The Cricket!

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Blog by Dave

Hello again everyone,

We arrived in Chandigargh after a thoroughly entertaining and also surprisingly comfortable jeep ride with the guys we met on our last night in Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj. There was Jon (Geordie journalist who has the most entertaining life ever and kept us enraptured on our jeep ride giving annecdotes of the famous people he's interviewed - mostly music stars from Dolly Parton to Liam Gallagher), his partner Lisa (who works in a London city bank) in India for 2 weeks and Jamie (a would-be film director from Cardiff) with his mate John (a scouser* newly qualified in Law) travelling round Asia for about 6-7 months.

This motley crew of six arrived at about 20:00 in Chandigarh at the first of our booked hotels, Hotel Alankar which came straight from the Lonely Planet book. We checked into the room and panicked. It was a dump - up three flights of stairs, dingy and nasty looking. Memories of our first night in Delhi came flooding back!

After we realised that this might be our only option for a room with the town having full bookings at all the hotels due to all the Brits who'd arrived to watch the cricket, we settled in for one rather than the planned three nights. We subsequently discovered that there was no hot water, the cold water dripped rather than flowed, no bed linen, a stained mattress with unknown leakages, and that the night staff here were simply rude, lecherous monsters.

So - at the risk of sounding dramatic - we packed up at 06:30 the next morning in the middle of a surreal thunder and lightning storm, and walked - yes walked - in the pouring rain about a mile, checking every hotel we came across for a room until we reached the Aroma Hotel, which was actually superb.

To briefly describe Chandigargh, it was designed by the French architect Le Corbusier and is actually no more than a block system such as New York of 1km by 1km grids with a roundabout at each intersection. It is tree-lined and clean, but has the feeling of being clinical and unfriendly. The construction is all squat concrete buildings which end in roundabouts on to the next street of concrete blocks making you feel quickly disorientated as it all looks very much the same. Each block is assigned a seemingly random number, and each side of the block a letter. All very organised - NOT. We soon discovered that although we were sleeping in block 17b, a row of restaurents adjacent to us was 35a.

We all met up on the first morning of the cricket Test Match (which I realise will be a foreign concept to anyone in Canada - see explanation at end) - after the thunderstorm - under overcast skies, and we proceeded to the ground a good hour early.

The quest for tickets proved most entertaining as we were led into the accounts office inside the main pavillion - something that would never happen in the UK as usually 'accounts' is a closed off area with high security. Ex-England cricket legend and commentator Geoffrey Boycott arrived and this proved irresistable to me, so I had a quick word. Superb. My week was already made.

Once inside - the atmosphere was incredible - so much different to that of a match in the UK where normally the spectators are fairly sedate but here the Indians had all sorts of costumes and fanatical chanting and shouting. One young lad had painted his entire torso in the flag of India with the name of the nation's favourite player "Tendulkar" painted on his back. He must have slept in this paint every night for the 5 day match as each day when we saw him the paint would be a bit more cracked and worn. That's dedication.

The English 'Barmy Army' (the nickname given to the official English cricket fan club) were dotted throughout the crowd and many were wearing their England cricket team shirts with the wide brimmed cricket hats (as sported by Jon & Dave in pics) with the English flag (white with red cross, not the Union Jack) hanging from posts and the back of the stands many with the name of local English cricket clubs that had come to support the English team.

Surprisingly we saw an English flag with the words "Billericay" across it - Billericay is the town where we live in Essex, UK. I went over to them and had a chat with them which was surreal. (see pic)

I won't bore everyone with the scores, but we saw some great action over the three of the five Test Match days we were there. The only black spot being Day Two which was almost entirely lost to the weather. This allowed us to wander the town, which only re-enforced to us what a strange and, for the most part, largely uninviting place it was without ever being threatening.

Overall - we had a fab time, even eating out at Kapil Devs (v. famous Indian ex-cricket player) restaurant. It's often the company that makes a time special,and with that in mind we also wanted to mention Jess, Phil, Ed, and Harry - some of Jon's friends who we met - excellent bunch of people.

(p.s. Congrats to Jess & Phil who we hear just got engaged !)

*scouser = British slang for someone from Liverpool

Cricket explanation -- quoted from the Lonely Planet: "Cricket is a curious game, like baseball designed by Freemasons..... There are two forms of matches; one is held over three to five days and widely regarded by noncricket fans as the world's most boring sporting contest, but it's revered by fans as a sublime mix of strategy, persistence and luck.

International contests are held over five days and are called Test Matches. The other format is

England & Indian team lined up to start match

the much faster and more flamboyant One-Day Test......In the international contest there are 10 test-playing teams, all former parts of the British Empire. The games' biggest support base by some margin is in South Asia. Cricket completely eclipses all other sports in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh...."

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