Once considered a landmark on the Amritsar-Delhi highway, Punjab’s first floating restaurant at Sirhind in Fatehgarh Sahib district is in a shambles with no proper approach road.
Due to its uniqueness, the eight-room eatery in the middle of the Bhakra mainline canal hit the headlines in the 1970s and went on to become a place of attraction among commuters and tourists alike.
Not only this, the restaurant run by the Punjab tourism department was once a stopover of buses running between India and Pakistan. But with the widening of the national highway and high twin-bridges on the canal, the restaurant lost its approach road and is no more visible from the main road.
The idea of building the floating steel structure was conceived by architects Jeet Malhotra and Amar Rajinder Singh of the state department of architecture in 1971.
Completed in 1972, the structure with a vaulted roof rests on a wooden deck which floats on five cylinders tied together. The deck served as an extension…