We took breakfast at a roadside café which seemed to be part of the Osho complex. My thin omelette was wrapped around soft white bread. It was quite nice.
We departed when Nandini dropped Jo over to us. Today, we are driving towards Chadigarh. The scenery was quite forested to start off with but turned to flat clear lowlands.
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- Preparing to leave Osho Resorts.
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- We had breakfast at the Osho eatery by the road.
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- Scene on the way.
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- Big speakers for a one-man band, perhaps for funeral hire?
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- Big speakers for a one-man band, perhaps for funeral hire?
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- A bus being repaired along the way.
Our first top in Chandigarh was in Sector 9D to pay a visit to Princess Wendy whom Pat had known in his youth. The princess is the daughter of the Maharaja of Faridkot in Punjab, near the Pakistan border. Her proper name/title is Raj Kumari Devinder Kaur.
As India is a republic, her family’s status doesn’t have a great bearing. She lives in a contemporary suburban house that is slightly rundown but may be considered upmarket for the location. She lives here with her daughter Chiko, servants and part-Pekinese dog called Timmy. We were served a lunch of sour chickpeas and okra.
Princess Wendy had organised our accommodation here at the Chandigarh Administration’s Guesthouse or Hospitality Department. Mushtaq took us there. Our rooms were quite nice, if we adjusted our expectations to local conditions. We rested until being picked up at 1930 for dinner with the princess.
Back at the princess’ home, we had drinks with nibbles of chicken tikka until dinner was served after 2200!
Throughout our long wait for dinner Wendy summoned her staff for various things. She had various means for doing this. First up, she had a pink squeeze horn. Then she also had a buzzer on the wall, and finally she also used her cellphone to ring the kitchen in the room next door. [Edit: The icing on the cake was when she rang the staff in the kitchen to shift her cutlery on the table closer to her! That was before our second dinner with her the next night.]
Wendy’s daughter Chiko had prepared a lamb curry with a delicious gravy, potato and cauliflower. Chiko is stunted due to a thyroid problem and despite being an adult, she is trapped in the body of a child.
While we stuffed ourselves eating dinner with spoon and fork, Wendy was more English eating curry and rice with a knife and fork. It was my first time dining with a real life princess. It was a late night and we returned to our accommodation about midnight.
Dinner with Princess Wendy.