Day 3: Chandigarh

Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s little project towards the end of his career, is a strange place. But first let me tell you about my hotel. Very shady. The guys there were all giving me these looks of suspicion and unease. Like they didn’t want me there. And they gave me a room right next to the reception, the sheets were not clean, it looked like this is where they rested when business is slow, which is probably most of the time. They also over charged me by about 300-400 rupees. Not sure what was going on there but it sure as hell made me want to get out of there ASAP. Thanks for the recommendation Lonely Planet!

Back to Chandigarh. It is India’s “first planned city,” a distinction that assumes that all settlements before 1953 were not “planned,” hmmm, interesting. Anyway, it is laid out in a grid, lots of trees (it is supposed to be a garden city) and blocks are called “sectors.” sector 1 is where Corbu’s famous buildings live. I stayed in sector 22. These are huge blocks, not NYC size blocks, this city was designed for the car (very Corbu). Oh and it is so clean that it is shocking to be here after Delhi. It also feels very middle class, people here are doing alright. I even took a city bus to the High Court, one of the three main Corbusier landmarks. For 25 cents I traveled across the city and passed by some nice little cubic modern houses. There is also a military base in town or near by so the seats on the bus had some funny labels on certain seats like “freedom fighter only” and “blind person only” in addition to the typical “old persons only” seats. I sat in the back and enjoyed the ride at 7:30 am.

We reach the final stop and I don’t see the high court, there are so many trees I can’t see anything. I just like my cities dense, non of this garden city crap, show me the concrete! You have to walk for about a mile practically threw the woods to get to the court building. On the way there was a little squatter settlement of short little brick boxes. No windows and barely 5 feet tall. This was the only sign of poverty I saw here. There it is, a Corbusier building! This is not my first, I’ve met his work before but I never thought i'd see this.

One arrives towards the back of the building. Looks a little shabby, many would probably think this is very ugly but I was loving it. I couldn’t enter the building because I had no permission so I had to go around. I thought I would find a pristine modern concrete plaza with the famous Open Hand sculpture in its center, you know like I saw this in Architectural history class. The plaza isn’t all that grand, weeds have cracked the concrete and the Open Hand, where is it? Oh there it is standing alone at the far end. Oh shit, why is the sun getting so intense already its only 8. Now I gotta walk across this concrete no man’s land to get to the sculpture that was designed to symbolize the newly founded capital of Punjab. Le Corbusier must have visited here in the winter when he designed this.

After a half hour of admiring the deserted sunken court by the Open Hand I made my exit and went to check out the Rock Garden near by. Why not, I’m already here. What a strange little place. Designed for a kid, all the doorways and arches are about 4.5 feet tall and every surface is covered with rocks, broken plates and cups, pottery and ceramics. There were mazes, valleys and waterfalls. Like an Indian Gaudi creation of an Alice in Wonderland set. There were bizarre armies of sculptures of little people, animals and just absolute randomness. My feet were killing me from walking on the uneven surfaces, the sun was getting intense, and I felt cluster phobic, get me out of here! It took another 20 minutes to find the exit, I was panicking. “OMG, am I gonna have to spend the night here, where is everybody, will I have to drink out of that artificial waterfall, but what if I get diarrhea?”, what’s that little doorway? it’s the exit! Sheesh!

Collected my bag from the shadiest hotel on earth then off to the bus station. Off to Amritsar.