Back on the road: Exploring Dhabhas & Breweries in Punjab!

Prologue:?

I love travelling for many reasons. The most important reason is that it helps me understand that people are the same whether they live in Patiala or Rio or Munich.

I would like to share one of my favourite quotes about travelling by Mark Twain here: Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Enough of philosophy!

Whenever I asked my friends where will I get good food in India, they always put an x mark on the map of Punjab. They told me that you go to any restaurant in Punjab, the food will be good.

That is true.

Toggling between the Leh & Chandigarh:

10th Sep’21 is one of the worst days of my life; I was lying in the bed sleepless throughout the previous night, which made me feel nauseous (I didn’t sleep on 9th Sep as well as I had to catch an early morning flight to Leh) and having breathing issues as my Spo2 was at 89 per cent, and to make everything worse, my back pain was back. Many thanks to the elevated altitude of Leh, and my own stupidity of not taking enough sleep for the past two days.?

That morning my friends from work were getting ready to visit Pangong Lake. I was not feeling okay for the above-mentioned reasons.

Since I wasn’t feeling well, one of the considerate friends told me, “We will drop you at a hospital on the way to the lake for a medical checkup. Take a call to travel after consulting with the Doctor”;

After checking up with two doctors (one at the hospital who punctured my right arm with a sharp needle and injected dexamethasone for faster recovery from Altitude sickness, another one remotely via call), I decided to leave Leh; Then, I asked my friends, “Is the airport on the way to Pangong? If so, please drop me at the airport.”

Side note: When we checked with the hotelier if there was any hospital nearby our hotel, he told us that there was only one government hospital (SNM Hospital) in the entire district of Leh. Shocking!

Dhabhas and Ghee drenched rotis!

I reached Chandigarh on 10th Sep at around 2 pm; I started feeling better as the oxygen level in Chandigarh was high compared to Leh, and the weather was warm.

I went to the auto stand - I enquired how much would they charge for taking me to sector 22 (though the conversation was in Hindi, I mentioned the number 22 in English, because I don’t know the numbers in Hindi after Baarah Tera! - Thank you, Madhuri), and then I had to use google translator to figure out the right word for 22 (Baaees) in Hindi.

Usually, it is the other way around in Mumbai, they tell me the numbers in Hindi, and I ask them to repeat them in English.?

After doing enough R&D in Hindi, I communicated the exact location to the auto driver; He asked me would I share the auto or would I like to go for a special option?

I was like, “What do you mean by special?”.

Special, in Chandigarh parlance, means that you rent the auto individually, and he will charge you Rs 500 (Paanch Sau! If anyone in Punjab is reading this article), and if I go for the not so special option (sharing the auto), he will charge Rs 250 (Do Say Pachash). I agreed to share the auto, and we dropped my fellow passenger in sector 28.

Post which, I asked the driver to take me to a Dhabha to have good Punjabi food.

He took me to Pal Dhabha in sector 28. I asked him to join me for lunch. And, we had hefty lunch and took over a few rotis, which I had later for dinner.

Chandigarh, an almost perfect city:

On 11th Sep, I was feeling quite okay - I was exploring the Chandigarh by foot in the early morning and checked out the rose garden. I’m totally impressed by the cycling tracks and the pedestrian-friendly roads of Chandigarh. I loved the aesthetically designed independent houses that were spread across the city to enchant you.

Everything is pretty organised.

And, the most coolest (intentional double superlative usage) thing in Chandigarh is that you don’t find any traffic cops at the signal - people follow the rules (well, most of them do.), and if they don’t, there are enough cameras to monitor your traffic transgressions and likely by end of the day you would receive a ticket from Traffic Police Department. Traffic Eden!

In the next few days, I visited Amritsar (nothing much to write home about Amritsar), Jalandhar (The policewomen at the railway station were cool.), Kapurthala (there are some interesting mosques, and palaces that were built by a French Architect Manteaux in the pre-independence era), and finally returned to Chandigarh.

Once I returned to Chandigarh, I wanted to hop as many pubs as possible. I visited Social in Elante, 35 Brew House and The Great Bear Kitchen (which happened to be the best microbrewery in Chandigarh).

Side note: I still long for the beers at Toit, Indira Nagar, Bangalore - In my humble opinion, Toit is the best microbrewery in India.

Hurdles of travelling:

The day before my return flight to Mumbai, I got the RT PCR done again (via 1mg) as it is mandatory for the travellers that are reaching Mumbai to have a valid RT PCR report. Generally, they deliver the report on the same day.

My flight was scheduled at 2:45 PM on 15th Sep. I started panicking in the morning at 8 am as the report was not yet ready. I followed up with customer care of 1 mg in the early morning, and finally, they were able to share the report after the flight took off. Great timing!

Finally, I rebooked the next flight to Mumbai via Indigo (whose customer care team was quite helpful), and reached my apartment at around 8 pm, and went to bed, and woke up at 7 am the next day.