The Milton Keynes of India!

Hari drove us back down to Chandigarh with his usual panache. We were now able to see the road and the surrounding countryside, which time and weather had denied us on our way up to Shimla. There are large sections of road undergoing reconstruction as I explained before. It was a real pickle, in part no road to speak of at all, traffic everywhere, dogs, pigs, cows and people and a policemen with a whistle attempting to direct operations! At one point, to our horror, a car came hurtling towards us going the the wrong way down the supposed road. Our driver deftly avoided the problem with an explosive ‘idiot’, but to be fair it isn’t the only time such a occurrence has happened! Only in India- this is not the place for a fly drive, unless one has cast iron nerves and lightning reflexes. Even on arriving In Chandigarh, where the roads are wide, tree lined avenues, the chaos remained. I would say the main roads were probably at least three lanes, but nothing is marked and the traffic is just a free for all. I found ‘eyes wide shut’ to be a useful aid!
Chandigarh is a new city, built as the capital of the Punjab, when the existing capital Lahore was annexed to Pakistan. Pandit Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister after independence, commissioned the city to be purpose built along modern lines. After a couple of false starts the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier was appointed. He was famous during the post war period as part of the ‘brutalist’ group of architects responsible for the clean, modern, concrete lines of the 50s & 60s. Hence our guide’s likening Chandigarh to an Indian Milton Keynes. There are roundabouts galore and the city is built along a grid system and divided into sectors. No building is more than three storeys high and there is lots of green space, with walks, outdoor gyms etc and each sector has its own market. It was a new way of looking at communal living and certainly it would seem to have been a great success and adapted to the Indian way of life.
Our first port of call was The Chandigarh Rose Garden. It covers some 40 acres, has 32,000 plants and 825 species of rose. It was busy with people out enjoying the green space and roses, which were just coming into bloom. It was good to wander having been in a car for the last three hours or so.
Our final stop of the day was exceptional. You may remember Monty Don stopping here on his ‘80 Gardens around the World’ whistle stop tour. It is a Rock Garden created by Nek Chand, which he calls a Fantasy and I wouldn’t disagree. In the early 1950s he was seconded to Chandigarh to work on the city project. A huge dump site of discarded materials existed where the garden now stands. From 1957 to 1975 Nek would secretly spend his spare time in the evenings and nights creating sculptures from the leftovers and hiding them amongst the foliage. He created over 2000! They are now displayed to tremendous effect in the garden. In 1975 his secret life was discovered and the powers that be were initially not pleased and Nek was banned from the site. It was only later that the authorities realised what they had in the man and his creations and asked him to build a garden here.
Nek created a ‘rock’ garden for Chandigarh, the like of which you will have never seen in your life.
We had a first class young guide to show us around and explain the thoughts behind what we were seeing. The garden is created entirely out of recycled building materials, from concrete to coloured wires to plug sockets. A narrow path for the visitor to follow, weaves in and out of incredible features. Jaws dropped, I can assure you. The planting is almost entirely natural and minimal and redefines what a garden can be and my photos will give you a taste of what I mean. All I can say is we were totally bowled over and I declare Nek Chand to be a genius!Read more