Two weeks in Kerela split almost evenly between Varkala and Kovalam. The former being a chilled out, traveller freindly hippy fest. the perfect place for us to wind down after our, quite frankly, crappy last 12 months. The latter being not as chilled out, 2 week package tour heaven (or hell depending on your perspective and as we know now, certainly not my bag) but we managed to continue to unwind and found some hope in an otherwise uninspiring location.
Two weeks in Chandigarh was more family orientated, food galore and weight inducing. The daily routine working itself into breakfast, followed by some difficult sitting in the garden, and maybe reading the paper, followed by lunch, an afternoon nap, rising early evening for Tea and Cake or biscuits, merging into early evening drinks (read whisky, beer, bloody mary, G&T etc) merging further into Dinner and finally to bed... this routine making up the skeleton of our lazy days in chandigarh. We expected nothing less and a great big thank you to Grandpa & Maaji and to Papaji & Amiji welcoming as ever. :) x
This routine was punctuated by the inevitable trips to sector 17 (shopping) sector 8 (shopping) aswell as a number of other sectors (shopping) not to mention the odd excursion to restaraunts - namely a chinese restaraunt the highlight being some awesome prawns, then a lunchtime buffet (chinese again) at the local taj group 5 star hotel, simply stunning food and service beyond compare (keep repeating "yes we are backpacking") and finally a more appropiate trip to KFC (more like it) - travelling on a shoestring never tasted so good.
The punctuations of the daily routines continue with our failed attempts to introduce an early morning (pre-breakfast) excercise in a bid to remove the imminent paunches we we're/are all developing...
...and finally no trip to chandigarh is complete without a visit to Nek Chands "Rock Garden" - we'd pontificated about this to Simon perhaps too much - in brief - Nek Chand was a municipal worker at the local dump when the city was first being constructed in the 50's - rather than dispose haphazardly of the construction waste he started to turn the waste into sculptures, forming them into bizarre shapes and building settings for them - all of this was against the rules, and when it was discovered the authorities were going to demolish it until there was a public outcry which saved the early works - he was granted a repreive and encouraged to do more - it grew and grew and is still growing now...
it is literally a load of rubbish and before simon saw it he thought all it was going to be "...just a few old bikes and oil drums" as it happens he was as impressed as I was when I first went and continue to be... here's some pictures that don't do it justice but you get the idea...
Part 2 coming soon!
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