Chandigarh A one day trip with Wife

I had booked 2 tickets to Chandigarh with my wife, to attend a friend’s wedding. Since I had 1 day time to visit the City, we had to pace ourselves and cover all the places in a day. We arrived at the Airport and went straight to the restaurant in the airport compound right across the domestic exit. After breakfast we took a cab to sector 42’s Hotel Amar Palace, a good hotel that was booked via Make my Trip. On our way to the hotel, our cabdriver informed us that, the buildings on either side of the road were painted red because government buildings are painted red in Chandigarh. We passed by the famous Mohali cricket stadium.

Chandigarh has cycle path in addition to the main road which makes it convenient for people to travel form place to place on cycle or cycle-rickshaw.

Chandigarh is a well-planned city planned by Mr. Le Corbusier, whose monuments such as the Open Hand Monuments, Assembly building and secretariats are all located in Sector 1 of Chandigarh. 

We took an auto from our hotel and went by the monuments for all of which we were charged 150 Rs, to finally drop us at the Bougainvillea Garden. In the Garden we went to the War Monument which has spirals leading to a centre. The walls of the spiral on either side have the names of soldiers who have lost their lives in various wars. The center of the spiral has a 3D Nib shaped monument which is named Martyr’s Monument. After a leisure stroll across the garden, we went to Leisure Valley. As a tourist, it was nice to learn that the entries to most parks in Chandigarh are free.

Upon crossing Leisure Valley, we walked to the Eiffel Tower Replica that is right next to the Tank Monument. The Tank Monument is also adjacent to a nice little cafeteria which has wonderful butter parathas served at nominal prices. We had breakfast here and entered the Art complex. The Complex has Government Art Museum, Modern Art Gallery, Architecture Museum, Natural History Museum all side by side.

One after another, we saw all these museums. It took us a long time to cover the Government Art Museum because it has different sections each dedicated to a theme such as Ancient Indian Art, Mughal Paintings, Indian Kings Paintings, Buddhist ruins, Japanese Cutlery, Ashoka’s ruins, Indian Mythological depictions. After this we went to Architecture museum which tells us how the city is planned. The museum also tells us how the city came to be the home of refugees of India’s partition story when Punjab needed a new capital. It also tells us the importance of the French rooster displayed in the Sector 17’s market water falls. And also the math behind various Landmarks located in various parts of the city. Also furniture from the past, design of the city’s plan which was printed on the manhole sanitary covers line were displayed in the museum.

From here we went to the Natural History Museum which depicts the Evolution of Earth, Life, Humans and Different realistic dinosaur fossil replicas which were fascinating to look at. The museum also has tools used by early man along with life like Lion and Black Panther at the entry. We went from here to the Modern Arts museum which had pictures and Modern art items made by the students studying there.

After having lunch at the cafeteria, we set out to the Rose Garden. Outside the rose garden we enjoyed a Camel ride. Even though the Rose bushes were prunned, we spotted a rose here and there. The garden has water fountains of various styles and the walk across the garden seemed worth it. We walked from the rose garden to the International Dolls Museum. The Museum is located in a shared compound along with Bal Bhavan and Working Woman’s Hostel. It has dolls from around the world. In the center of the building, there are dolls depicting Ramayana, Mahabharatha, Arabian Nights (Alibaba and the 40 thieves, Alladin), Cinderella, Snow White and similar depictions form Fiction and Mythology.

We then took an auto to Nek Chand’s Rock Garden. The Rock Garden is a garden created from industrial waste. It takes about 3 hours to see everthing in the Rock Garden. It has Artificially created Waterfalls, depiction of nek Chand’s Village, Depiction of a temple, a fort and several Indian Rangoli Designs engrained in the walls, an aquarium, hall of mirrors, meandering wall with Swings having cement horses on the top, a doll house depicting life of rural punjab. It is a cement jungle with cement dolls covered in porcelain shards, bangle shards and shaped differently in different sections. One sections has different animals in groups such as Dogs, cats, deers, horses. Another section has men and women in different postures. Along the path, there is a section where the walls seem to be from thermocol like rock material. There is even an open house theater with a large cinema like screen made of LED which plays a video of the features and history of the place.

After spending time in the Rock Garden, we went to the adjacent Sukna Lake. At the entrance, we ate the Famous Raj Kachori. We then walked along the 3 Km long stroll along the lake that lead us to the Silence Park. As we had walked all day, this walk seemed somewhat straining. As the boating charge there was 300 Rs per head we decided to skip the attraction. Once we reached the Silence park, seeing the Large Buddha seated in the center of the park gave us great joy. The park is shaped like a contour with the Buddha seated in the center of one of the contours. When we reached the park, it was empty and we enjoyed our time there. From there we walked along the Golf course to reach the main road. From there we took an Auto to the Sector 17 Market Place.

The sector 17 Market has a large open square, which a fountain. When we arrived we saw the Musical fountain began. Then we sat along the Waterfalls with the French rooster and reminisced the journey we had that day. After going along window shopping, we had dinner at Hot Millions Restaurant.

From here we took a cycle rickshaw to our hotel which cost us 80 Rs. We then went to bed early as we had to leave to Bangalore early in the morning. 

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. We travelled to North India and explored the beautiful city of Chandigarh on our own. Spent a day exploring the city hurrying from one place to another covering all the nearby tourist spots and returned home. From here we took an auto to Chandigarh Airport at 4:45 in the Morning and had a hurried tour of Delhi, which will be covered in the next blog post.

Aditi Hosabettu's House Warming Ceremony

On one April morning in 2016, Aditi Hosabettu personally invited me to her house warming ceremony at Gundmi, a town on the highway connecting Udupi to Mangalore. And so I set out to attend the ceremony along with Anuj Duggal (Yes, the Anuj Duggal from the Inside Out posters and Intel Software Innovator Summit and GDG events).

For the journey we decided to board the bus at Yeshwanthpur KSRTC bus stop which is a 15 minute walk from my home. And since we planned to be on time, we reached my home early, freshened up and roamed around Mahalakshmi Layout which is popular for its wide variety of temples. I have been living in Mahalakshmi Layout for all my life and I had never visited the museum located in the Srinivasa temple, the bus stand where I caught bus every-day. It looked like a good opportunity to take Anuj there and look at the place myself, and so it was (^_^)

That night we boarded the bus as planned and then got engaged in nostalgic conversations till we reached the destination, Shastri Circle (Named after the late Lal Bahadur Shastri).

Aditi had booked a grand hotel room at Sharon Hotel, for our stay where the breakfast was complementary. She also arranged for a car to take us where-ever we wanted and assigned Mr. Ratnakar to take us to the tourist spots nearby. In his demeanor, Mr. Ratnakar was very friendly, jovial and told us the story of Kollur Mookambika and explained the different characteristics of all the places where he took us.

The functions was scheduled on Friday evening and since we had time in the morning, we had time to go to some local tourist spots. And so we went to 4 places namely:

1. Hatti Angadi (Vinayaka Temple)
2. Baindoor Beach
3. Kollur Mookambika Temple
4. Maravanthe beach

After having taken the blessings from Hatti Angadi, we were surprised to see the Baindoor beach all for ourselves. Me and Anuj were literally the only 2 people at the sea-shore and collected lot of sea shells and coral formations for the memory of the journey.

At Mookambika temple, we got to spend time with the temple elephant that was blessing temple visitors with its huge trunk. It was a treat to see the goddess especially after listening to the stories from Mr. Ratnakar.

From there on, we set out to our hotel, and as we passed by Maravanthe beach, we decided to walk around and lay down at the stone pedestal facing the sea. After a good nap, we both decided to go back to the hotel. Even-though this beach is famous for its mesmerizing road separating the sea from the river, some fly-over construction was going on due to which, we could hardly see the river. Regardless of this, we spent a good afternoon listening to the sea roar.

When we returned back to the hotel, there was still time before the function, so we took rest at our rooms till our cab arrived at the venue.

Upon reaching the ceremonial house (“Parvathi Krupa”), Aditi showed us around her new house, explaining each room with respect to what was to be done in the room and why certain rooms were designed the way they were. We sat out chit-chatting and occasionally talking to some of her family members who were at the event. We left the function after having grand food and arrived at the hotel to take a grand nap.

Next day morning was the auspicious house warming ceremony. Narhar Dev Sharma, one of our Intel colleague joined us at our room and accompanied us for the rest of the day. En route, we decided to go to Aditi’s current house, for which she drove us in her Alto, where we met her mother and cousin Sandeep, who gave us a drop to the celebration house. At their house we saw peacocks roaming around and everyone in the house was busy getting ready for the event.

Upon reaching the new home, we were greeted by Hatwar uncle who welcomed all of us. The celebration included boiling a pot traditionally in the kitchen, till it overflowed. Which was accompanied by several traditional South Indian songs.

Later the family sat in the room where the God was worshiped, and chanted Rama Raksha Stothra followed by Vishnu Sahasra naama followed by beginning verses of Bhagavad Gita. The ritual continued till lunch time where we sat for lunch in the traditional South Indian style sitting along with other invitees and had lunch over banana leaf. By now, we had gotten acquainted with a lot of Aditi’s relatives and felt much welcomed.

Our plan was to visit the Udupi Sri Krishna temple in the evening, so we had checked out from our hotel and brought our luggage to the event. We set out from there at 2:45 and reached Udupi by 3:15. At the temple, we were accompanied by Rashmi and her mother who were big devotees and wanted to have Lord Krishna’s blessings. Later on that day, we went around the temple premise and came upon the spot where Madhwacharya was prophesized to have disappeared.

Having completed all the temple’s in our list we then set out to Malpe Beach, where my mother had asked us to join her. We took the local bus to Malpe beach which seemed to take a long time to reach the venue. After having played in the beach till 6:40, we decided to leave back to Udupi Bus Stand where Rashmi set out to meet her relatives, while I and Anuj decided to go to Mangalore to spend our next day exploring something different.

We enquired for good rooms that were close to the KSRTC Bus Stand in Bejai area of Mangalore. After zeroing down on staying at Hotel Panchami, we went out for lunch and ate Butter Nan for dinner while planning what to do on the next day.

We came to know about “Pilikula Nisargadhama”. It was a nature reserve that had a botanical garden integrated with a zoo. Next to that was a park with an aquarium and a lake which had boating; additionally it had a few more tourist attractions which we decided to skip due to the intense heat. The place had its own restaurant where we found the food to be delicious. The park also had lot of ducks which moved around us on floor as well as while boating. It was especially a treat to see a pair of boys feed ducks with popcorn for the first time and enjoy the experience.

We had heard a lot about Panambur beach and left as soon as we finished going through the zoo. It was at panambur beach that I ate my first Ice-gola and it was really yummy.

We got back to our rooms, packed up all our belongings and then called KSRTC about our change in boarding point. The Conductor was very friendly and pointed us the exact time at which the bus would reach our boarding point. We boarded the bus that brought us back to Bangalore, with lots of memories of fun and joy which we had experienced during our little journey to Kundapur and back.