This forest of intricately decorated statues was begun in secret by a man who never considered himself an artist but built what became India\u2019s most visited tourist site after the Taj Mahal, the Rock Garden of Chandigarh<\/p>\n
A forest of curious cement statues stands on the edge of the city of Chandigarh in northern India, their bodies dressed in colourful costumes made from beads and broken glass bangles. There are figures of women carrying baskets on their heads, alongside dancers and athletes, police officers and patients, ministers and musicians, beggars and children \u2013 scenes of rural village life, frozen in mineral form. An army of concrete monkeys squat on a slope nearby, while a herd of oxen roam a tiled pasture, their bodies covered with fragments of broken china. Narrow passages weave between these mystical tableaux of ceramic creatures, channelling visitors through deep gorges, past streams and waterfalls that cascade between the lush vegetation.<\/p>\n
This sprawling 25-acre fantasy land is the arresting vision of Nek Chand Saini<\/a>, a local highways inspector turned self-taught sculptor, who spent years piecing together his dreamscape in secret. While the Swiss architect Le Corbusier was building his megalomaniacal plan<\/a> for the Punjab capital \u2013 a place of imposing government buildings linked by monumental axes \u2013 Chand was busy collecting leftover construction waste, and fashioning it into a spiritual mirror image of the modernist city. \u201cWhat Le Corbusier built is the sky,\u201d Chand said. \u201cMy work is the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n