The Manchester of India. Review on Ludhiana

So it's called, the manchester of India, for it is a heavily industrialized city and also the hosiery capital of the country. The first impression you get when you enter the city is, you guessed it, heavy traffic. Mostly because the city roads were not initially built to handle the population that lives there now. But the municipality is working on(and has already done so) building fly-overs / bridges over really congested areas of the city. But amidst the constant beeping, exhaust smoke and chaos, one forgets it all for a second when their eyes lay upon a statue of a great personality of our country, standing tall in the middle of a roundabout or a "chowk". People like Kartar Singh Sarabha, The great trio; bhagar singh, rajguru and sukhdev, capt nirmaljit singh sekhon and his jet, an indian armytank, lala lajpat rai and many more.

The city has really expanded a lot in the last 5 years, engulfing small villages around the city into its radius. 5 star Hotels, Golf Clubs, High end restaurants; you name it and ludhiana has it to offer. Oh and how can we forget; shopping. Being the hosiery capital of the country, a lot of garment industry is in this city. One can find everything from a small roadside sunday stall to the most expensive garment showroom on this side of the equator. Specially a place called Chaura Bazaar( means wide bazaar) is very popular among shoppers. Ironically, its one of the most congested places in the city(where the streets are really narrow) where if you get stuck in a traffic jam, you might aswell turn your car off and go to sleep cause you aint getting out of there anytime soon. So most park their cars away and usually do a 10 minute walk for ease of accessibility. If you can deal with the congestion in that part of the city, its a shoppers heaven.(Bargaining is the key).

Food Lovers, you will not be dissappointed bu ludhiana. You will find every kind of restaurant; from greek to italian, dosa to chinese, pizza to McDonalds, green tea's to latte's. And if you crave some finger lickin punjabi food, no place does it best than the dhaba's.

In terms of things to do, there's a variety of things one can indulge in. Pool joints are allover the city, a lot of cinema's, bowling alleys or the standard teenage past-time; hangout at popular shopping joints and the nation-wide past time; Gerhi( gerhi is the slang for just driving around hot spots in the town with your friends with no pre-determined destination untill you see someone you know, thats when you stop, chat for a bit and then carry on again). Lots of nice classy bars all over the city or one can go old school, chill at a "haata"(sort of like a bar, but you bring your own booze). By the way, haata's have some of the best chilli-chicken I have ever tasted.

Not much to do in terms of sightseeing as there aren't many historical sights in the city, other than some famous gurdwara's in and out of the city. Agricultural University has a punjabi museum that has everything relating to the punjabi history and culture. The university is a nice and quite place to spend some time, probably the cleanest and the quitest place in the city. There is also a war museum in the city which is pretty interesting.

Being born and grown up in ludhiana, I only have good things to say about it as I love my home city.