Pegging Patiala- Part 2

Absolutely non-discrepit. Thats how you feel about Patiala city. To someone who's grown up north of India, the city is non-distinguishable from any other. In fact you wouldnt even know that its Patiala until you reach that one big chowk with the State Bank of Patiala building nearby which welcomes you there in big fonts. Hmm...now what? is perhaps the question which would spring up in every tourists mind.
Yep..we thought as much. But we'd heard of a couple of places from friends. Though sceptical we were, we were deprived of civilization, fairly confident of the peg at the end of the rainbow (read: day), and therefore knew that we couldnt do much wrong. Sheesh Mahal is where we headed to first.

Unlike the n number of sheesh mahals in n cities of India that n number of tourist mom's drag their bored kids to, this one here in Patiala has no mirrors. Can you beat that?? Whoever has heard of a Sheesh Mahal with no mirrors. I felt cheated. And almost wanted to demand my money back from the guard. Particularly after having seen the interior of the palace converted into a museum. We were desperate to see the sights and sounds of the city instead, here we were pretending to appreciate ancient tibetian art inside a dinghy gallery. But then there's a upside to the Sheesh Mahal we didnt realize till late. And i'm sure even the late Maharaj Narender Singh, the founder of the Sheesh Mahal was not aware of this. They serve Fountain Pepsi in paper cups on the gardens outside. Ah bliss! To get to taste cola after all that time almost made up for having to see Narender's collection. On later reflection, maybe Narender's future generations had gotten plagued with guilt over their Sheesh Mahal with no mirrors and decided to make amends with all those glass structures we saw along the road? Tch...Tch...one wonders..maybe it would have been just easier to re-name the damn thing?

Anyways, it was already late afternoon by this time and the next two city-must do's was the gurudwara Dukhniwaran and Baradari gardens. Post that, we could safely say been-there-done-that and down those much talked about pegs. On the way to the gurudwara is when we had the first chance to really travel on Patiala roads. Smooth and neat they were. And running alongside elaborate tree line bungalows on either side of the roads. And for a change, none of those bungalows had football, Maruti-800, or Jet-plane shaped water tanks on their roofs (this is fairly common in rural-Punjab). The roads ended in circular roundabouts with well maintained gardens and designated yellow road signs. Not bad for a small city, one thought. The Gurudwara itself was in a busy marketplace and was sort-of special to me becuase it was the first ever i'd entered in. Maybe i'd never write about religion in my blog, so i am choosing not to elaborate on this.

Next stop was baradari gardens, which I remember more becuase of its huge and ancient peepul tree more than anything else. Navnit had a good idea and decided to take some sepia tinted pics which give it a very bhootia look against the late evening sun. Other than that, the garden has a decent joggers track which i remember being quite inviting to break into a run in.

Having done the mandatory touristy thingy we realised we were hungry and had not eaten post lunch. Thats when the hunt for the highly recommended M/S Oberoi and M/S Verma bakery of baais no. phaatak started. Of course, as with almost every highly recommend places this one also had to be exclusive to the point of being obscure. But after a sizeable number of bewildered passer by's and nauseating u-turns later we did manage to reach this market below a flyover which had two bakery shops resembling the describtion. The bakes were good but Mr Oberoi was better becuase he seemed knowledgeable and did guide us to the right watering hole. It turned out to be a nice place with a breezy garden and tables with white cloth on top.

Yep folks..thats how the peg finally got downed. I think it was Vodka, though we didnt down it neat as we perhaps should have, as a mark of respect to the city that's given th world the measuring instrument tipped 30 ml more towards the correct side. But what the heck, the city has also introduced the trend of glass less sheesh mahals. We mixed it with sprite, and aptly so becuase the mix symbolised how our experiance was.