Summer in Chandigarh: Chandigarh

Chandigarh, officially referred to as the City beautiful, is situated less than 300 km (5 hours by car, 35 minutes by plane) to the north from Delhi. When it comes to administrative division, it gets fairly complicated - Chandigarh is an union territory, which means it does not belong to any state (is governed by federal government), but at the same time it is technically the capital city of 2 other Indian states: Punjab and Haryana. A good thing is that it apparently works.

The Open hand, symbol of Chandigarh.

Map of Punjab (state) & India, including Chandigarh.

The city is said to be the cleanest, best-planned and wealthiest city in India. Let's have a look.

1. cleanest
The city is undoubtedly the cleanest Indian city I've seen so far - unlike in other cities, they use dust bins and waste containers, which helps a lot:) However, it still doesn't look like a typical European city - the "problem" is in an inconsistent landscape. In Europe there are shops, office buildings, apartment blocks, detached houses, malls, squares etc. In Chandigarh it is the same (I mean it is a proper city, not just a big village, as you could say about some other Indian cities), but whereas in Europe these structures are usually surrounded by paved areas or gardens, here you can also find uncultivated fields, cow yards, slums, meadows etc. Yep, it is India.

Main square, sector 17 market.

Uncultivated fields randomly appear between houses.

As far as a pollution is concerned, it is kind of OK. On the one hand, the city is definitely more polluted than for example Prague, but on the other hand, it is within acceptable limits - you can notice it only when driving in a rickshaw (especially when waiting at the traffic lights), or crossing a street.

The city is clean, but waiting at the traffic lights in a rickshaw makes you realize that could be cleaner, and "more green".

2. best-planned
The city was entirely designed by a French architect in 1950s. Although it doesn't look French, it also doesn't look typically Indian. What makes the biggest difference is the sector structure. The city is divided in many (ca. 60) sectors, which are organized in a way of structured rectangular grid. Every sector has its outer market (at the sector-dividing road), inner market, school and some other standard facilities. There are couple of major roads going through the entire city, connecting all important sectors. One of them (connecting Panchkula with the center of Chandigarh) is called Madhya Marg, a significant landmark, my favorite one (I'm spending ca. 40 minutes in rickshaw on it every day).

Map of Chandigarh. Check out the interactive version.

Sector 17 - there is the main city market, as well as my office.

All the houses have their specific house number, unique in respective sector. To make it easy to locate specific house, sectors are usually divided into 4 segments (A,B,C,D), and on the other hand, clustered in sector areas (e.g. northern sectors etc.)
The system of streets is also interesting - there are usually round-abouts at the intersection of sector dividing roads, from which you can enter the sector and continue your ride on inner roads that go along with dividing streets. At first it seemed to be just a complication preventing you from entering sector in convenient locations, but the intention has probably been to reduce the traffic within sectors and rather keep it on wide dividing streets. And it works.

BTW, the official website seems to be well-planned, too... which cannot be said about the website of Transport department.

This is how all orientation signs look like - sectors all around.

3. wealthiest
There is supposed to be the highest average monthly income of citizens in the whole India. It sounds good, however, I'm not sure how this can be measured, as there is obviously too many people without regular income - both, slum people and poor class in general making their living on daily basis, as well as the elite class with literally unlimited funds. In either case, there is really a lot of people from middle class, and they do have money. Therefore, you can find many European-style facilities in the city, e.g. cinemas, malls, shops of world-known brands, fast-food chains, bakeries.

You can come across people from the middle and upper classes very easily (not only) in the city centre.

At the beginning of my internship, I was told I could find everything in Chandigarh. Despite the previous paragraph, it is definitely not true. I'm not speaking about beef and pork, which is not available in the whole country, but you cannot get even a proper cheese or proper baguette (except for Subway), or find a reasonable choice of pasta or fruit yogurts. And I'm particularly missing all of these. To be precise, it is probably available somewhere in Chandigarh, but it is only 1 or 2 shops in the whole city that are not reachable without car or bike - unless located close to your home or office (which is usually not the case).

The only fridge in the whole Chandigarh where you can find European-style baguettes (no beef, no pork, of course).
Unfortunately it is too far for me to go there.

Rock garden & Sukhna lake
... both located in the outskirts of Chandigarh, are the major attraction for local people as well as the tourists. Rock garden is a leisure site/park with many sculptures and other different pieces of artwork made from garbage. Sukhna lake is situated just next to the Rock garden, and is a common weekend pastime destination. Both places definitely have their specific atmosphere.