Question

diary entry on Chandigarh

Answer 1

write on Easy method


If you are one of those lucky few who have been to Chandigarh, you will definitely agree with me that it is one of the best places in the world to spend your life. It is for those people who never got an opportunity to visit Chandigarh and for those who never cared to include it in their travel plans, that I am writing this travelogue, to convince them to pack their bags and rendezvous with this wonderful place

I got this wonderful opportunity to visit Chandigarh during my last Christmas vacation and before this trip all I knew about Chandigarh was that it was the capital of both Punjab and Haryana and was very cold during winter season. The latter thought revolted me as I was never a great fan of cold weather.

DAY 1:

We left for Chandigarh on 26th afternoon by air. On reaching Chandigarh, two things struck me as odd, first, the weather was not as cold as I had expected and the second, the airport was extremely small to be called an airport even after considering the fact that it was mainly used for defence purposes. The arrival hall was even smaller than the cafeteria in Mumbai airport. Nevertheless we got our baggage and went out to find our driver. The hotel where we were going to stay had arranged for free pickup and drop service from the airport for us. This cannot be considered as a noble gesture by them as they were charging an exorbitant amount for one night’s stay. Soon we found our driver holding a placard containing my dad’s name. The driver, a nice guy with a weird Hindi accent, which was mostly incomprehensible, guided us to the car and helped us with our luggage. He then gestured my dad who was sitting in the front seat to wear the seat belt as we were not aware of the fact that Chandigarh was known for its stringent rules and more importantly the measures taken by the cops to impose these rules. Being used to the badly constructed roads and lack of any greenery in Mumbai, it was refreshing to see clean four lane roads which were lined with trees on both sides. Another interesting thing about Chandigarh is that after every kilometre there is a roundabout and the area between four roundabouts which is exactly one square kilometre, is called a sectorSoon we reached our hotel (Hotel Mount view) which was the only four star hotel in Chandigarh then. Now they have a strong competitor in Taj Chandigarh. As they say, the comfort level of a hotel room is inversely proportional to the time spent on sightseeing. This statement almost became true in our trip as the room was extremely cosy and comfortable and it took us all our will power to leave the hotel for sightseeing.

Since it was late in the evening we were advised by the hotel receptionist to just go for shopping in sector 17 for the day and leave remaining places for the next two days. One surprising thing about Chandigarh is the poor public transport facilities available here given the fact that it is a well planned city. The widely used mode of transport here is the cycle rickshaw. We went to a cycle rickshaw stand nearby and asked a rickshaw driver to take us to sector 17. The normal seating capacity of a cycle rickshaw is 3 people but for normal healthy people the capacity comes down to two or even one for extremely healthy people like me. Nevertheless we somehow managed in two rickshaws and reached sector 17. We were amazed to see that an entire sector was reserved for shops. It is a paradise for shoppers especially for the fabric lovers as it had a multitude of clothes shops selling every known brand and known dress type available in the market. After two hours of shopping we ate our dinner at a south Indian restaurant called Sagar Ratna which by the looks of it looked like the most preferred restaurant in sector 17 as there was a beeline of crowd waiting to enter the restaurant. Fortunately the long waiting time was compensated by the amazing south Indian food that was served to us which we relished. We went back to our hotel by 10 pm and immediately fell asleep after a long tiring day filled with travelling and shopping, to get fully charged for another long day.