After one night in a brand new hotel in Dehli ASCCPCI (Atilla Soft Core Communist Party Crew of India) hitched a ride with a bus full of Norwegian overlanders heading for the Pakistani border. Nice! At first they seemed really nice offering mineral water and some kind of finger chips, but after a while we started to suspect that something was wrong. "Yea, yea.. we've been traveling all the way from Norway, but now we're heading home again." There was especially this one guy who almost couldn't move his head... and he kept repeating .. "Manjinders place, Manjinders place".. spooky indeed.After a quick overnight stop in the obviously fascist controlled city of Chandigarh, also known as "The City Beautiful", ASCCPCI got their suspicions confirmed! We're we not at all going to Atari city at the Pakistani border, we were going to some strange place called Punjabi Bagh. The Norwegians in the bus got more and more exited and anxious when we got closer to this place. "Best cook in Punjab.. Manjinders Place.. 2000 people ceremony .. great place". Only time could prove them right or wrong.
We we finally got to this place they stopped the bus and we stepped out of the North Indian reality covered with dust and dirt and whatnot and into a beautiful garden with a live waterfall lit by small lights all accompanied by sweet sweet Punjabi techno music. In the middle of it all was a fantastic castle only matched in beauty by the great Taj Mahal. Who could know that such a paradise lay hidden just meters from the road covered with dusty scooters, horses and bicycles so old that the Indians could only have gotten them from the British colonists.
After this everything seems blurry, the people of the Norwegian bus must belong to some secret Sikh caste because the servants of this man Manjinders Place offered us the most fantastic Indian dishes with flavours you could only dream about. Could it be real? Amazing dancers keeping our eyes busy while we where munching on cake and chicken and drinking like mad westerners in some kind of a psychedelic dream. Could it be?
The next morning ASCCPCI woke up and everything was gone. The palace, the food, the eclectic dancers, the lights and all that was left was a bus full of sleeping Norwegians. ASCCPCI decided to hit the road and hitched a ride on a cart pulled by an old camel. It must all have been a dream. Or could it be that the Norwegians put some strange Indian drug in the finger chips? We will never know, but dream or not, definitely an awesome experience for the ASCCPCI.
