Visiting Punjab-1
Los Angeles/Apr 07, 2026
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh
It is always a great pleasure for me to visit India in general and Punjab in particular. My last visit was in 2024. However, due to some reasons I couldn't make it in 2025. So, this year, at the very beginning of the New Year, along with my wife Baldev, we made plans to visit our ancestral home again. We decided to go directly from Vancouver to New Delhi with Air India. Thus, on the morning of February 23, our son Barinder took us to YVR. We checked online. After dropping off our luggage at the Air India counter we proceeded to security. It was good to see some Punjabi speaking officials at the security check. Furthermore, It was great to hear the boarding announcement in Punjabi in addition to English.
The Air India airplane appeared to be relatively new. The cabin crew was also quite helpful. The flight to New Delhi took off on time. With a fuel stop and crew change in Vienna, Austria, it took us close to 20 hours to land in New Delhi. After clearing immigration and customs, we were on our way to my ancestral village Pharwala, near Nurmahal in Jalandhar District of Punjab. Along the way, it was a pleasure to see impressive and spacious dhabas lined up on both sides of the national highway. We stopped at one of these dhabas to enjoy parathas and tea. Later on, we had another stop at a dhaba for a delicious meal and arrived home around 10 AM .Our relatives were eagerly waiting for us.
Along the way, the flowing green fields of wheat in f Haryana and Punjab were a pleasant scene. The traffic was light as it was early morning. A large number of travelers seemed to be NRIs. Incidentally, March is an ideal month to visit as the weather is fairly mild. The temperature usually is around 25 to 30 degrees Celsius. The day after our arrival in the village, I took a tour of our village. To my surprise, there were very few young people around. Also, there were a lot of empty homes. Quite a few people I knew had moved to the cities or went overseas. The gathering places that used to be full of people were sitting empty. During my travel to other places in Punjab, it was the same story.
On the other hand, the cities are thriving. The roads and highways are full of cars and other vehicles. Traffic jams in cities are quite common. Hats off to the drivers in Punjab. They are very resourceful. Surprisingly, they manage to get through heavy traffic somehow. No doubt, both the federal and provincial governments have been doing a lot to ensure road safety, yet driving continues to be a big challenge. During the next few weeks, I was looking forward to visiting my relatives, friends, and a few places of historical importance.
Balwant Sanghera
(Balwant Sanghera is a retired School Psychologist and Community Activist. )
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