Packed up camp and left Amritsar.  Continued on the Grand Trunk road towards Delhi.  Compared to the Pakistani roads it was a delight!  We stayed with it for most of the day; turning off in the afternoon at a small town called Sirhind.  The town contains the ruins of a 16^th Century Fort.  We located the Moghul ruins, saw a small owl perched in one of the windows (it was too quick to be photographed) and decided that there wasn’t a great deal of the buildings left to see. 

We moved on, taking a backroad to Chandigarh.  We stopped for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice at the road side and met an Indian guy who spoke good English and admired our Landrover.  He sat in it to try it for size.  We duly admired his smart, sporty Tata fourwheel drive and he offered to show us the way to Chandigarh. 

Chandigarh is the Milton Keynes of the Punjab.  When Pakistan was Partitioned as it’s own country, the Indian Punjab was left without an administrative centre.  A swiss-french architect was commissioned to design a city from scratch.  He came up with a somewhat inappropriate design for a city with fastflowing traffic.  Wide roads intersected with roundabouts.  We thought that we had got back to Milton Keynes!  Unfortunately, like Milton Keynes, the signposting was somewhat inadequate.  We must have spent over an hour trying to find the way out of the town.  On one abortive attempt we headed out into very picturesque villages and past a nature reserve, before the road petered out into a mud track. 

Eventually we picked up the thread and cound the road that headed towards Shimla.  We stopped for the night at the Budgerigar Motel at Pinjore.  It is an old Moghul summer palace that has now been converted into a very comfortable hotel.  Our room has fantastic views.  We intend to look around the Yadavindra Gardens that surround the hotel tomorrow.