Hotel Venice (%2225061; www.venicehotel india.com; Dhangu Rd; r from 1780; a) has the best accommodation and restaurants. There are also hotels on Railway Rd and for those with ongoing rail tickets, there s the train station retiring rooms (d 200).
The overnight 14553/4 Delhi Una Himachal Express train connects Delhi with Anandpur Sahib (sleeper/3AC/2AC 165/430/590, eight hours, daily). It departs canada outlet plug Delhi at 10.15pm and on the return leg it departs Anandpur canada outlet plug Sahib at 10pm.
JUNK ART GENIUS Following Independence, as refugees flooded across the Pakistan border and a newly liberated India made the bold statement that was Chandigarh, one of the new city s road inspectors, a diminutive arrival from Pakistan called Nek Chand, was struck by the amount canada outlet plug of waste generated as villages were cleared in the construction of Chandigarh. Chand hauled this matter back to his jungle home and gave it a second life as sculptural material. Eventually he had tens of thousands of forms made of urban and industrial waste, as well as local stone, created by his own hands and the slow forces of nature. His battalions of water women, pipers, chai drinkers, monkeys, cheeky stick men wearing tea-cup hats, dancing women and other characters canada outlet plug steadily multiplied in secretly sculpted spaces. Chand s efforts weren t officially discovered until 15 years after they began, when a government survey crew stumbled upon them in 1973. The unauthorised garden was illegally occupying government land and should technically have been demolished, but fortunately the local council recognised the garden as a cultural canada outlet plug asset. Chand was given 50 labourers and paid a salary so he could devote himself to the project. Today, the garden is said to receive over 2000 visitors a day. There s a Nek Chand Foundation (www.nekchand.com), raising funds and recruiting volunteers. Chand had no formal education beyond high school. In my childhood I used to build mud houses and other toys. He is said to be influenced by modernist masters such as Le Corbusier and Gaudi, but he is clear on the main source of his ideas: they are a gift from God.
The Sikhs holiest site after the Golden canada outlet plug Temple has several historical gurdwaras. An important pilgrimage site for more than 300 years, it was founded by ninth Sikh guru Tegh Bahadur in 1664, before the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb beheaded him for refusing to convert to Islam. His son, Guru Gobind Singh, founded the Khalsa (Sikh brotherhood) here in 1699, and Holla Mohalla (see p 200 ) celebrates its anniversary.
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