Chandigarh

Chandigarh was built to be a statement. After Partition left Punjab without a capital, Nehru commissioned a new city, and from 1951 Le Corbusier, working with Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, laid out sectors of eight hundred by twelve hundred metres, each meant to be self-sufficient. The Capitol Complex at the northern edge, with the Palace of Assembly, the High Court and the Secretariat in raw concrete, joined the World Heritage list in 2016, and the 26-metre Open Hand monument still turns in the wind. Its perfect counterpoint is Nek Chand's Rock Garden: a roads inspector began building it secretly in a forest buffer in 1957 from broken bangles, sanitary ware, tiles and industrial waste, and by the time officials found it in 1975 it was so loved they made it public. Sukhna Lake, dammed in 1958, fills with walkers at sunrise; the Zakir Hussain Rose Garden grows some 1,600 varieties. The city is also the base for Punjab and Haryana road trips. Signature days pair Corbusier's buildings with the Rock Garden.