Leaving Chandigarh

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The last few days in Chandigarh have been great. Its a wonderful city thats left a fantastic impression on me of Punjabi people.

A few days ago I went and had a look at Le Corbusier's Secretariat building, the High Council Building, and the Assembly Hall. Each building was unique, striking, and extremely well designed. It was quite an ordeal to get all of the permissions organized. I needed one set filled out in triplicate saying I should be granted permission, then another set for each building to obtain permission, and another set for each building for photography. Finally I needed a couple of passes at various checkpoints, and anywhere in the viscinity of the Secretariat building I was accompanied by armed guards. All the headache of paperwork was well worth it though as the buildings were truly spectacular.

I should tell you all about Narinder as well. I was sitting having a late afternoon lunch in a resturaunt after seeing the government buildings, and a wonderful white haired Sikh man with a long flowing beard and curled mustache approached me. He sat down at a nearby table and handed me a newspaper clipping. It explained that the man, named Narinder Singh was a retired government employee that had spent the last 20 or so years of his retirement devoting himself to tourists in the city of Chandigarh. Making sure that they had a clean, safe place to stay, and that they had opportunity to take in all the different sights that the city has to offer without being swindled. After I had read the article we sat and spoke together for about 20 minutes when he suddenly bolted out of his chair and into the street. It turned out that two girls looking like they had just arrived into town were hoisting their bags out of a rickshaw. Narinder managed to convince them to come into the resturaunt even though the girls looked extremely suspicious of him. Narinder asked them to have patience, and wait, and then began rooting through his bag for something. Somwhere near the bottom he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a necklace made of flowers and put it around one of the girls necks before sending them on their way. I somehow managed to catch a picture of the transaction so take a look.

I have seen more acts like this, and more selfless kindness from total strangers in Chandigarh in the three days I was there than I would have in years at home. After my trip north I am coming back to see Amritsar, and to visit a few small villiages. I am really looking forward to coming back here.

Well, I made it out of Chandigarh yesterday without any trouble at all. I booked myself a ticket on a toy train (extremely small scale train) to Shimla on a section of track that climbs the extremely steep mountain ascent, reaching the hill station at a height of 2300 meters. The section of railroad is a feat of engineering, being built over 100 years ago, and still being the only section of rail to reach the hill station. Check my next post for more details.

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Comments

[Randy]

Man it's really cool that you are experiencing all of this. I've really been enjoying reading all your posts so far and seeing the pictures.