Chandigarh – Friday and Saturday before Wedding Festivities

On day four we started our journey from Jaipur to Chandigarh. We took the minibus to Delhi which took about five hours. We stopped briefly at A’s family friend’s apartment which is four stories and very modern. There were several servants waiting to offer us coffee or water. We then jumped into two separate cars for the remaining journey. The total time from Jaipur to the hotel in Chandigarh was 12 hours. The roads from Delhi to Chandigarh were actually quite nice, and the towns in between a lot nicer than Delhi to Jaipur. We had a quick meal at a rest stop where I had a delicious dosa.

We arrived at the Gaur hotel on Friday night where everyone was staying for the wedding. The hotel is really new and very fancy. There were still finishing it while were staying there. They had amazing showers, although ours was made of a frosted glass that could be seen from the main room.  You can see photos from my previous Chandigarh post.

Chandigarh is the capital of Haryana and Punjab. It’s a planned city and considered to be the cleanest in India. Instead of hectic, traffic filled streets, Chandigarh has wide streets that allow traffic to move freely. There is landscaping and even sidewalks.

On Saturday I went with a few of the other wedding guests to the shopping sector. We took a rickshaw for a couple dollars which was surprisingly pleasant. We wandered around trying to find Fab India (an awesome Indian store) for about 30 minutes. After asking about 10 people who don’t’ speak English where it was, we finally found it. It turns out we were sort of spiraling around it. White people are somewhat of  an intriguing site here. Children are either very excited and try to touch your hand or they are terrified of you. Generally, everyone we have met here is extremely nice and helpful. 

This is the shopping area. Having wide open space is very different than the other cities we visited. 

We randomly came across dozens of notaries in the shopping sector.