We duck into the tiny arched doorway and enter a spectacular, labyrinthine world of rock-formed curiosity.

We’re in Chandigarh, India’s first planned city, completed in 1960 under the guidance of famed architect Le Corbusier. On our way to Delhi from Himachal Pradesh we learned of the “Rock Garden,” a passion project by a man named Nek Chand and decided we should take a couple hours off-route to check it out.

There are giant cement trees, winding paths and walls, staircases and rooms made of piled rocks, giant stone archways with swings, and magnificent waterfalls, each larger than the last. The place is enormous, at least ten times the size we’d first imagined (about 25 acres), it seems to go on endlessly, getting stranger as you go. Toward the end Ned breaks out the bizarre animal crowds, bangle encrusted dancing ladies and marble men. It’s a wonderfully weird scene.

Strange moose creatures sandwiched by weird elephants and lumpy camels

One of many massive waterfalls

seated ladies clad in broken bangles

Turns out, a lot of the materials he used came from the 50-odd villages that were destroyed to make way for the planned city. Ned started in 1957 and spent nearly twenty years creating more than two thousand sculptures.

In the early days of his Rock Garden, Chand worked at night to keep his creation a secret from the authorities but he was eventually found out. Thankfully the city recognized the value of his fantasy world and actually helped him to expand his vision to it’s current splendor. Now it’s the city’s largest tourist attraction.

Visiting places like this and like Niki de St Phalle’s tarot garden in Tuscany, like the Selaron stairs in Rio de Janeiro,  and Isaiah Zagar’s “Magic Gardens”  in Philadelphia make me itch with the fire ants of inspiration to create a fantastical world. Orien and I have a vision to create a spectacular, immersive, experimental world of art, architecture and color, a place where kids can come to explore their dreams for life and express themselves creatively, an artist residency for artists from around the world to come to make art, teach the kids and explore their process in a creative environment. We’re imagining, mosaics that rival the mirrored Iranian mosques, out of this world cast concrete columns and structures, experimental architecture pod houses which will function as a modular guesthouse for visitors, tree pods, rope bridges, reductive rock rooms inspired by the Ellora caves… a lifelong, never-ending passion project.

Just need that land.