Chandigarh, India
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Today we went to the Rock Garden in Chandigarh.
We don't have a lot to write about it but it is so worthy of a mention of its own - and because we have dozens of photos from there.
Anju dropped us off on her way to work at the University at 9am and we were practically the first ones there.
We paid an entrance fee of 40p each and thought it was so cheap that there wouldn't be much inside.
How wrong were we.
I think it is fair to say that this is Chandigarh's main tourist attraction and now we have been inside it is easy to understand why
waterfall
It is the creation of one man. Nek Chand.
He was a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. It is completely built of industrial & home waste and thrown-away items (which sounds quite dirty and smelly especially as we are in India but really isn't) and it consists of bottles, glasses, bangles, tiles, ceramic pots, sinks, electrical waste, etc which are placed in high walled paths leading you around the garden.
There are man-made waterfalls in several places with little bridges and tunnels leading you around the site. There are little doorways in the walls that are so small they must be for Hobbits!
The story goes that in his spare time, Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani, choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake for his work. The gorge had been designated as a conservation area in a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on.
Chand’s work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a 12-acre complex of courtyards and waterfalls each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals.
It seems the authorities were a bit upset at first and his work was in serious danger of being demolished, but he was able to get public opinion on his side, and in 1976 the park was inaugurated as a public space. Nek Chand was given a salary, a title ("Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden"), and a workforce of 50 labourers so that he could concentrate full-time on his work and it has now grown to 40 acres in size.
It even appeared on an Indian stamp!
So that's the story and we hope you enjoy looking at the photographs.
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