After two days in Delhi we had the privilege of accompanying a Sikh family on a pilgramage to their holiest of places, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. The journey took in Chandigarh and Shimla on the way and was just as much a voyage of discovery as Delhi had been.
With Jasbir Singh, International Cricket Umpire
Unfortunately I hadn’t had a cup of coffee since leaving England and withdrawal symptoms kicked in on the way to Chandigarh. I felt awful, with a splitting headache, and wasn’t really in the mood to spend all day in a car. On top of that, the scenery didn’t change at all all the way there, which was a surprise and disappointment. It was very flat with fields either side and roadside shacks which all looked like they could do with a makeover or at least a tidy up. Of course this is a judgement made through Western eyes. Indians just don’t have the same regard for public space as we do, and very little effort seems to be made on external appearances.
The land here is very fertile and we passed lorry after lorry laden with bags of rice on the way to be processed – to have the husks removed, and be packed for shipping to feed the whole country. Some tractors were in evidence and there were some large farms, but mostly we passed smaller plots of land being tended by people bent double or by ox-drawn ploughs. There must be enormous scope for improvements in production.
Chandigarh is a new town, built after partition to be the capital of the part of Punjab which remained in India. It is a clean and spacious town, partly designed by Le Corbusier, and is relatively prosperous having the largest per capita income in India. As a keen cricketer, I was interested to see the Mohali Test Cricket ground with large murals of greats of Indian cricket such as Gavaskar and Kapil Dev. It was a bonus, then, when one of our friends made a couple of calls & we found ourselves sitting in VIP seats next to the players as guests of the international Umpire Jasbir Singh at a state match: Punjab v Karnataka.
Christ Church, Shimla
If the road to Chandigarh was flat and boring, the trip to Shimla was much more interesting as we entered mountainous terrain. The road was very twisty and turny as well and was very busy with slow trucks getting in the way. The journey would have taken forever if I had been driving – you just couldn’t see far enough to overtake “safely”. This didn’t seem to bother our driver, though, he just went past the lorries whether a blind bend was coming or not. As there was often a sheer drop on one side and evidence of rockfalls every 200 or 300 yards on the other, and oncoming traffic seemingly giving us no escape it was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt as a passenger. To be fair the overtaking didn’t seem to bother the oncoming traffic too much – they just slowed down to let us in and continued on their way.
Shimla is a fascinating town with an interesting history. It is 7,000 feet up in the mountains so is a lot cooler than Delhi or Calcutta. In the summer the British Raj de-camped here to escape the heat and the Empire was effectively run from here. Nestled in the mountains, it is an attractive city with an imposing wide square – the Ridge – dominated by a statue of Indira Ghandi. The legacy of British rule is clear – for example on the corner of The Ridge stands Christ Church, the one church we came across on our travels. This is impressive building with lovely stained glass windows and interesting “in memoriam” plaques detailing the life and death of many local colonialists.
The Golden Temple at Amritsar
The road to Amritsar was even worse than the road to Shimla, with long stretches which really tested the tyres and suspension of our car. Distances look short on a map, but take all day when you can’t often get above 20mph. but eventually we got there, and boy was it worth it. I once went to the Maldives, and the first time I went snokelling literally took my breath away as I saw the spectacularly-coloured fish for the first time. The first glimpse of the Golden Temple ranks up there as a similarly breathtaking moment. At night, lit up and reflecting brightly across the Sarovar – the Lake of Immortal Nectar – it is simply beautiful.