Punjab observations

On the plains of the Punjab, in the city of Patiala, past glories are crumbling.  How active a restoration plan responsible for the closure of both the Sheesh Mahal Palace and most of the massive Qila Mubarak, the Fortunate Castle, currently is, is difficult to discover.  The great walls of the Qila Mubarak are apparently being worked on, slowly; the galleries in the Sheesh Mahal have been close for 2 or 3 years and are expected to be so for at least the same time again - not much activity there is apparent.  For all that Patiala is a charming place, more like an overgrown village than the second largest city in the Punjab after Chandigarh.  The wide streets and great buildings of the town easily give way to busy, narrow streets in the bazaar, seductive with goods on display. The great abandoned palaces, particularly the Sheesh Mahal with its red towers and improbable  'Lakshman Jhula' suspension bridge stretching across a now dry tank retain a faded romance assisted by a notable lack of tourist traffic. 2 remarkably disapproving statues on Queen Victoria, one minus an arm and most of her nose hold sway in the remains of the garden. On this flying visit we had little time for exploration beyond the purported major sites but the city, within touching distance of Chandigarh airport and wide range of hotels, would bear longer exploration although it might perhaps be worth waiting for the palaces to re-open, if that ever happens during this lifetime...

In the Qila Mubarkah the only room open, without running the gauntlet of the security guards on the main gate as we did, hurrying past them and the no entry signs when they weren't looking, is the Durbar Hall.  In truth braving the enraged but impotent security was hardly worth the effort of walking passages and courtyards with no possibility for interior exploration. The Durbar Hall too is well policed when it comes to photography - utterly ridiculous given current levels of preservation of exhibits which are mainly in any case an impervious collection of swords and similar, massive dusty chandeliers and candelabra on a giant's scale,  with a handful of British royal portraits of the standard description - Kings Edward VII and George V and their queens.  Full length mirrors surrounding the walls make surreptitious photography difficult - it seemed to me that the handful of staff enforcing such strictures would be a good deal better employed in polishing the silver clad carriage, presumably a royal conveyance before the early 20th Century Maharaja, Bhupinder Singh, invested in a fleet of Rolls Royces, which has turned almost irredeemably black.

The deer park, former hunting ground of Maharajas, holds the usual rather depressing collection of caged birds including, improbably, a very sorry looking emu, with enclosures of various deer and gazelles from the ordinary to the more exotic and beautiful black buck.  It is really somewhere that one would rather not go although a mixed collection of rabbits seemed to be doing what rabbits do perfectly happily but oddly, in spite of burrowing huge holes, not apparently effecting their escape. Other gardens such as the famous Baradari botanical gardens will have to wait for a more leisurely visit but one suspects for now that Patiala is not entirely on top of its tourism potential.  Most friends in India were inclined not to get much further than poor jokes about Patiala pegs and excess thereof.

Back in the environs of famously well laid out modern Chandigarh with its modern urban architecture, the attractions are the feted Rose Garden, to foreign eyes just a perfectly acceptable urban space with flowerbeds; Sukhna Lake, a great expanse of man made reservoir much used for local recreation; a plethora of iconic buildings and venues for legislation, entertainment, sport and education.  The most bizarre monument of all, the Rock Garden, was designed by an unknown transport official in his spare time, Nek Chand began to build his extraordinary dream from recycled rubble and rubbish more than 50 years ago. Today this eccentric park covers more than 40 acres, populated by strange imaginary tribes of people and animals made of anything from shards of china and electical fittings to broken bangles and broken rock.  The mangroves and baobab trees, like the great cliffs above meandering paths are made from cement filled sacks pushed into shape before setting permanently.  Waterfalls crash down man made gorges with scaled down villages of pavilions and cottages crouching above as giant out of scale gods glare down from the plateau.above. Vast coloured mosaic walls are a Gaudi mirror image and the Rock Garden, not surprisingly, has become a major tourist attraction and a popular wedding and concert venue where strange mosaic horses look down on proceedings from the top of concrete and sacking arches and a rather sad camel gives rides to unimpressed children.

Punjab university, based in Chandigarh, is a famous institution, its second campus on former slum land, growing fast; its various schools known for excellence in their disciplines.  For a foreigner used to nicely heated classrooms and certainly well heated hostel space, a university like this, is, for all its modernity, quite a shock to the system.  British students would be out protesting on the streets if they had to live in unheated surroundings and the winter in Chandigarh, a chill wind blowing down from Shimla and the mountains that are the backdrop to the city, is cold.  Otherwise the city offers most modern amenities although I am assured by a current student that shopping is not up to much even in modern malls and cinemas are no better than they are in most Indian towns where cinema going is a noisy, smelly, often uncomfortable, crowded and excessively social event only moderately focused on watching a film.  My meanders round the central pedestrian shopping area resulted in new heels for my boots that cost 60 rupees and are unlikely ever to wear out since they appear to have been recycled from good Punjabi tractor tyres.

I stayed in a Marriott Hotel in central Chandigarh - there is a wide enough range of hotels - no surprises in the Marriott and a proper pizza oven to suit entertainment of hungry students. In better range of their pockets and very much to my taste was the splendidly formica clad Punjabi Restaurant (you might need to identify the right one of potentially hundreds of the same name). It is the sort of place, a clone of the best restaurant in Hong Kong, the old Indonesian Restaurant, in Happy Valley, that you know without question will be good - all about food and sod the look of the thing. Full to bursting with locals and students at all hours, this is good honest local food at quite spectacularly good and honest prices. £4 perhaps for double the amount two hungry people could eat including phenomenal tandoori chicken, roti, dal, rice, pickle and so on. Unbeatable.