A Visit to Punjab

Chandigarh

This year All India Physicians conference was held at Ludhiana in Punjab.  As there is no direct flight to Ludhiana we had to go to Chandigarh and from there to Ludhiana.  We planned to visit places of tourist importance in Chandigarh and Ludhiana.  Friends advised, if possible, to visit Shimla.  So we added that to our travel itinerary.  Our travel was in the third week of February.  We first reached Chandigarh airport, from there by taxi landed in hotel Sun Park.  This is about 20 KM. The hotel room was just ok.  It was midday, but very cold in Chandigarh.  When we asked for hot water they said it will come, ever after 1/2hr of waiting we could not get even luke warm water.  As we wanted to go out for half a day trip, we had to take bath with that water and get ready for the tour.   Though we were told that warmers will be there in the room there wasn’t any in the room.

The hotel travel desk arranged a cab for our tour.  The driver had taken us for a trip to Sukhna Lake, Rock garden and Zakir Hussain Rose Garden.  All these were within a range of 60KM from our Hotel.  We planned for half a day tour or travel of 120KM.

Streets of Chandigarh city are wide and clean.  There are no houses or shops abutting the main roads.  Traffic can move smoothly. 

 

Sukhna lake is beautiful.  The environment is serene.  The birds swimming in the water are a pleasant site to watch.  Boating on the lake by pedaling is at own risk.  Many youngsters wearing life vests were into boat riding.  If we sit on the steps of the lake and hold something to eat the birds come and try to pick up the packets.  But there are instructions not to feed these birds.  The birds are fearless and come very close to the people sitting on the steps.  It is a picturesque place to spend a cool evening.  As tourists we could spend only an hour there.

 

 

 

Next we visited Neck Chand Rock Garden.  I think this is the best tourist attraction of Chandigarh.  It is a must visit place. 

With artifacts of demolished buildings and other structures, broken tiles and glasses and naturally occurring rocks many beautiful statues, sculptures, buildings, waterfalls and streams are created.  There is also a huge open air theatre in here.  It takes more than two hours to see this place.  I feel that this should actually be called as Rock village as we see houses and streets here.  The creation of this rock village – rock garden is human marvel.

 

 

 

Zakir Hussain Rose Garden is a fragrant place with more than 5,000 varieties of roses.  Roses are of many different colors, shades and sizes are present.  They are given different names which are difficult to remember for simpletons like me. 

We asked our cab driver if there are any places which we can see in an hour we had, he was very reluctant to answer and dropped us back at the hotel.  We asked him if he can take us to Kalka Railway Station the next morning at 4AM, he said it will cost us Rs.1300/-.   As the hotel people had said that they could arrange it for Rs.1000/- we preferred that.

While returning from Ludhiana we again came to Chandigarh airport.  The toilets here were very dirty.  At one place in the airport I read photography is prohibited in the airport.  But some kids have taken photos in the airport.  I suppressed my temptation to do so.