Day 132 Saturday 27 January 2007, Mandawa to Chandigarh, India

A long drive so we start with our usual alacrity at 10.30am and after briefly getting lost in Fatehpur with no young lad to help us this time, we soon reach the main road north which for the first 200kms is a good 2 lane road with little traffic. The scenery is mostly desert scrub, quite sandy with flocks of goats eating the thorn bush and the occasional camel, sometimes pulling grossly overladen carts. We pass the odd upside down truck, detouring around spilt loads of bricks or sacks of cement, never ceasing to be amazed at the Indian truckies ability to run into things or overturn their vehicles on deserted roads or park them in ponds and their unswerving and unquestioning faith in the invincibility of metal and wood despite so much evidence to the contrary.

As we pass into Haryana state from Rajasthan the number of towns and villages increases, the quality of road deteriorates rapidly and the volume of traffic grows rapidly. At the same time the weather becomes murky as a result of thick pollution from fires, industry and brickworks which belch smoke incessantly. Bad as Bhopal was, it seems that in Haryana its like that everyday.

By nightfall we reach Chandigarh at the foot of the Himalayas. Its an Indian version of Canberra or Milton Keynes, complete with roundabouts, greying stained concrete and monolithic government buildings. The city was planned by Le Corbusier in the 1950s as the new capital for the Punjab (the original was left behind in Pakistan by Partition) and is reputably the cleanest, greenest and most efficient in the whole of India. Certainly it has more Mercedes than cows and is the first one we been to that has real shops. We find the Kwality Regency hotel without too much difficulty and set out for a nearby restaurant, which involves getting lost in a carpark, and bribing the doorman to ensure our car, parked in a no cars area, isn’t towed away.

Distance Today: 451km Trip to date: 20,640km