Roads and rodents of Chandigarh

Chandigarh feels like it’s in a different country to Bangalore. The streets are wide and there is less traffic, but more ways to get around. Pedal rickshaws jostle on the roads with the auto-rickshaws and a few horse-drawn carriages clop along with the cars. It’s much easier to navigate (from the passenger seats, of course) and nobody seems in much of a hurry, although when a herd of cattle stomped through a main intersection there was some driver angst.

The city has been cut up into sectors, making the addresses in the various hotels seem like parts of a prison. It’s not that bad, but it is well-organised and rustic. People say it’s an Indian version of Canberra, with the planning but without the roundabouts and landmark buildings. From what I’ve seen over the past two days there aren’t many similarities. It’s like nowhere I’ve been before.

Westerners don’t seem to be a regular part of the trade and I’ve heard that the first time one of the Australian journalists opened his hotel-room door he saw a rat above his eyes, which then scurried to the window sill. It took another two accommodation houses before he found something close to his original standard (the journalist, not the rat). On Australia's tour here in 1986 the players were horrified to see rats, but Geoff Marsh, the opening batsman, said he'd seen bigger ones on his farm.

I believe I’m in the same hotel as where it happened, but I have stayed in much worse places. If I was living here while I was at university I would never have left, but I’ll see how it goes. At the moment not being able to connect to the internet is a bigger deal. It’s down for a day. Or more. Time is hard to judge here. Five minutes can mean half an hour, so I might have left Chandigarh before the “back-end server problem” is fixed. Modern life is warped. Once food and water was satisfactory, but now it’s a room free of rodents and full of unlimited WiFi.

The stadium in Mohali, a suburb of Chandigarh, doesn’t seem to fit with the city. It is grand, imposing and rises on the same strip as a tent city, where people wash near the roads and sit round small fires to cook. The Punjab Cricket Association Ground looked immaculate and from the pavilion a shady line could be seen in the distance. It’s the start of the lower Himalayas, but there is as much chance of Sachin Tendulkar retiring 15 short of a world record as cold weather over the next week. It is hot, hazy and a much better place to be a spectator than a player.

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Hindi isn’t the only Indian language that Brett Lee has been learning. When he sat down for a press conference at Mohali on Wednesday he offered the Punjab greeting sat-shri-akal. He even pronounced it properly, which impressed those who are more familiar to these parts. The rest was in English, but Lee’s small deeds and wide smiles go a long way to showing why he’s so popular in this country.