Chandigarh

Chandigarh is the only Indian city where the plan came first and the people came second, and you can feel it in both directions. Le Corbusier drew it in the 1950s as numbered sectors, each meant to hold its own market, school and green belt. It works better than critics admit — you can live a week inside one sector. The grid skips Sector 13 entirely. Come for the concrete. The Capitol Complex — Secretariat, Assembly, High Court, and the Open Hand turning slowly in the wind — is UNESCO-listed and looks like nothing else in the country: raw board-marked concrete, water-stained by sixty monsoons, built to be monumental rather than liked. It sits inside a working government precinct, so you cannot simply walk in. Register for a free guided slot at the Sector 1 tourism office and carry photo ID. Go in the morning; afternoon light flattens the facades. Two hours will finish the Rock Garden, where Nek Chand built a city out of broken bangles and electrical fittings on government land before anyone noticed. Sector 17's plaza was once the point of the whole scheme and has since lost its trade to malls — worth a walk through, not an afternoon.