Foodporn

One of the main reasons for me travelling to the countries I'm visiting is their food. Indian has always been an absolute favourite of mine, and I can't wait to take baths in pho in Vietnam or to eat tubs of thai curry and pad thai... So far I've gorged on yak in Tibet, momos (dumplings) in Tibet, Nepal and India, eaten tonnes of dhal bhat in Nepal and devoured endless bowls of curry here in India.

I'm going to do a cooking course in every country I go to. I did one in Nepal, where I made to different kinds of momos, and I did one when I was in Udaipur. The course in Udaipur was a lot more extensive than the course in Kathmandu, as I made 10 different dishes! I booked it with a guy who owns a spice shop in Udaipur, and his family has a farm outside the city where they grow all of the spices organically. So on a sunny Thursday afternoon I went Vijay's shop, and ten hopped on the back of his motorbike and after a 10 minute ride we were at his home in the suburbs. Vijay then set up a tiny little kitchen on the floor of his bedroom, and that's where I had the 3½ hour lesson with his two daughters and wife buzzing about.

First I made chai, a sweet milk tea that indians drink in abundance. There is not a single food or drink establishment in India where you can't get a cup of steaming masala chai. The aisles of trains are constantly filled with men selling chai, and as soon as bus has stopped someone will be shouting "chai! chai! chai!" and lugging a thermos with them. I love chai, though I prefer it with a lot less sugar than how the Indians like it. The Indians really love their sweets.

After making myself a tasty cup of chai, I made some vegetable pakora, which is a delicious starter of veggies (or paneer or chicken) mixed with spices, chick pea flour and water and then deep fried in small bite sized morsels. So tasty, especially when served with a chutney or a cooling raita. Pakora is widely available on the streets of India, 20 rupees will get you a eart portion and they are delicious! Though I always forgo the chilies they offer with them, as they're usually spicy enough without them.

I made three different curries: malai kofta, a potato ball that's deep fried (Indians love to deep fry their food) and served in a curry sauce with curd (yoghurt) and fresh coriander, aloo gobi, potato and cauliflower in a tomato curry sauce and then a paneer butter masala. Paneer butter masala is my favourite curry; it's cubes of paneer (an Indian cheese) in a rich, buttery tomato masala sauce. Oh my it's delicious. And all of these curries are very simple and easy to make as well fast. All you need are the staples for Indian cooking: oil, spices (the 7 basic spices found in every Indian home are turmeric, coriander, cumin seeds, anis, salt, garam masala and chilli), fresh chopped coriander and onions and garlic, onion and ginger pastes. With those in your kitchen you can pretty much make any curry you desire.

To go with the curry I made 3 different kinds of chapati (types on Indian breads often used instead of rice); plain paratha, aloo paratha (stuffed paratha with potato and spices) and a plain chapatti. All 3 use the same basic dough, made from wheat flour, and fried in similar fashion on a chapatti pan. A chapatti is fried ony using a little bit of oil and then pressed on the pan to puff it up and a paratha is folded with oil inside it and then fried in little oil.

I prepared a rice dish too, Khichdi rice, which is a dish in itself. Very similar to a biryani,  it's cooked rice with tomatoes, peas and potatoes with spices. Easy and quick to make, the veg can easily be substituted for meat. This is a dish that is served at family gatherings and parties as it's super easy to make in large batches.

I also made a pudding, gulab jamun. A basic sweet of solid milk rolled with flour into a dough ball and deep fried before being drenched and served in a sugar suryp is incredibly sweet and of the four balls I made I only ate one. This was also partly due to having gorged on the previous 9 items of food prepared... Indians have an incredibly sweet tooth, sweet shops are on almost every street corner and the variety of products is huge. Once finished I hopped back onto Vijay's bike and he gave me a ride back into town where I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon nursing the world's largest food baby.

Indian street food is a whole new world of deliciousness. Samosas, pakoras, dhals, puri...The list goes on. At first I was wary of trying them, not due to the poor leve of hygiene that might be used, but due to the fact that most are on the sides of busy, dirty streets and cars and buses are constantly wizing past. But I've gotten over that now and am stopping for snack in the afternoon or having a meal with the local standing by the side of road plate in hand.

Tandoori dishes are also super tasty, especially tandoori chicken. Serve that with some butter garlic naan and you're drooling.

My favourite Indian dish currently is Masala Dosa. A dish that is traditionally a breakfast dish in the South, is eaten at all times of day and pretty much all of the country.  I've had it for breakfast every day for the past 2 weeks, and lot of the times for dinner too. It's a large, thin rice pancake that's stuffed with a spiced potato and onion mix and  served with sambar, a curry gravy and a coconut chutney. The combination is delicious, and it's fast and cheap. So good. Oh my. Another delight is idi vala, a rice cake and deep fried chick pea donught, served with sambar and the coconut chutney.

Lunch in many places is a thali, a dish with rice and lots of different curries and veggies. The best one is in Mysore, served on a banana leaf. Rice, three different kinds of curried veg, sambar, dhal and a coconut curry sauce, curd and onion curd and a papad for the grand total of 85 rupees is just the best lunch of the whole trip. That place is so good I went there every day when I was in Mysore. I also had a masala dosa at the bus stand in Mysore every morning. No shame.

Mysore also had the best market I've ever been to, and I've been to many. Rows upon rows of stalls selling fruits and vegs, spices, rices and pulses... It was glorious! Never in my life have I seen so many bananas in one place. Nor have ever seen someone carefully stack red onions into neat pyramids as they did there.

As tasty as this has all been so far, I've not had fish at all since I left Last Resort in Nepal. And boy do I miss it. On Sunday I'm going to Pondicherry and the first thing 'm going to do after my nap (I get in at 6 am on a bus from Bangalore) is go to a restaurant and splurge on a whole fish.

All I seem to do in India is relax and eat.

A hearty welcome to you!

Time passes so fast and I'm doing so much that updating my blog always seems to be the least of my priorities... I guess that's how it should be though. I do love writing it and letting you all know what I've been up to!

Since the last update I've visited many a place.. With much joy and gleefullness I bade New Delhi goodbye and headed up to Himachal Pradesh, to Manali. Manali happens to be the drug capital of India, and it's not uncommon to see marijuana bushes scattered around and locals rolling hash from it. Drugs (and the hippie tourists that follow them) aside, Manali itself is a little bustling hub. There is New Manali, where all the buses drop you off, and there is a small market and a wee Tibetan colony and a couple of monasteries. I stayed in Old Manali, a 2,5km walk up from New Manali, which at this time of year is prettyclose to being dead. A small collection of guesthouses and cafes dot the hills, serving steaming cups of chai and selliing woollen products to keep the freezing tourists warm. I spent most of my time in Manali doing small hikes around the area, drinking plenty of beer and just rejoicing in the fact that there were no people around me at all. And that was absolutely glorious.

After some down time in Manali, I moved on to Dharamsala on a 10 hour bus ride on a bus that I was sure would fall apart at any moment and that tethered my bottom into a state of utter numbness. On this bus I met Khalil from Greece, Stani from Bulgaria and then a Mexican couple (I don't know if I ever even knew their names...) and together we endured this experience. After a swift bus change in Dharamsala, we climbed up to McLeod Ganj, our final destination of the day. As per usual, as we got off the bus, we were swarmed by touts who claimed they had the best and cheapeast room in town. And for once, I took advantage of one. Khalil and I teamed up, and followed this little Nepalese dude through McLeod to the guesthouse where he lived with I'm assuming his Dad. We made a deal, and for mere pennies Khalil and I secured a room for the next few nights. We then detoxedfromour bus ride by devouring a tandoori chicken with butter naan and beer.

McLeod is the home to the Tibetan Government in exile and the Dalai Lama when he is in India. Lucky for us, His Holiness was in town for the wee we were there, and was holding a conference. I'm sure we cold have registered and attended the coference, but we settled for heading to the Temple every once in a while to see the talks via live video feed. Even though the Dalai Lama wasn't there in the same room, just the fact that he was 150 metres away on the other side of the temple complex was pretty powerful. I spotted Demi Moore leaving the conference one afternoon. And yes, she is just as hot in real life as she is in the movies and pics.

McLeod has accumulated a huge Tibetan community, and is where the refugee centre for Tibetans who have left Tibet is. I spent a lot of time talking to Tibetans who lived there, and heard some really incredible stories on how they managed to cross over without being spotted by the Chinese guards patrolling the border. I spent time watching documentaries on Tibet and joined conversation classes to chat about the situation there, and enjoyed plenty of good Tibetan food. That week was a true eye opener for me, and I realized how blind I'd been to the situation in Tibet whilst I was there. But in hindsight, what could I have done whilst I'd been there? Nothing really. A local in Tibet caught talking to me about almost anything could be grounds for arrest, and Tibetans are terrified to talk to foreigners. Monks have no religious freedom, and Tibetans have been made a minority in their own land. It's an awful situation, but I'm glad I've been there, and I'm glad I went to McLeod to learn about it some more. I watched Kundun in McLeod after many years, and it got a whole new perspective now that I'd been to Tibet. I recommend it, it's a very good film about the life of the current Dalai Lama u until he had to flee Tibet in 1959.

I had originally planned to spend a couple of nights in McLeod before returning to the heat of Rajasthan, but as many a tourist before me, found myself staying there for a lot longer than originally planned. In addition to spending my time hanging with Tibetans, I sampled cakes from this amazing little Tibetan bakery, ate delicious japanese food for lunch every day at Lung Ta, drank an abudance of beer and lemon, honey and ginger tea and gorged on momos.

Finally getting sick of the cold weather, I headed back down to Jaipur for Diwali! I now regret not going to Rishikesh from McLeod, as that's where The Beatles spent time in (apart from Ringo. He and his wife got bored of the vegetarian food after a month and left. Tee hee.), and am now too far to go back. I have ambitious plans of making it to Pondicherry and Kerala before I leave.

Anyhoo, back to Diwali in Jaipur! I joined forces with Ajeet again, and then met Nathan from Canada through him. Together we spent Diwali at Rakesh's (he is the manager of Chitra Katha hotel where both Nathan and I were staying) roof top, having gorgeous food served to us, along with plenty of rum. At one point a bottle of Absolut joined the festivities. The soundtrack of the evening was fireworks and loud bangs as every one in Jaipur let loose and had a blast lighting everything up well in to the night. Even we finished the night with little sparkler fireworks and bombs. Nathan almost blew himself up and then proceeded to disappear into the Jaipur night only to reappear at 4 am. The next day Anna from Sweden joined us and we visited Ajeet's fort and his wee, wee baby. I have never seen anything as small as that baby. Size of an sheet of A4. Whisky was consumed, as was food that gave me a stomach bug and delhi belly!

With Ajeet working, Nathan, Anna and I found a way of entertaining ourselves; America Day! Armed with our Chucks, we headed to KFC for lunch, which was followed by watching Bridesmaids and collapsing. This was followed by ice cream at Baskin Robbins (oh mint choc chip...) and then we headed to the World Trade Park, a gigantic mall, and far more western than any I've seen before. There we dined in the food court, and then went to the movies and saw Gravity. Good film, but it completelyquenched all of my desire to ever go into space. And seeing Sandra Bullock wearing very littleclothing floating around a space ship is always most pleasant.

After a bit of a hassle, Nathan and I found ourselves saying goodbye to Anna an heading to Jaisalmer to go on a camel safari in the desert. A night spent on a sleeper carriage, and found ourselves in the sandstone city of Jaisalmer. We found our cheap guesthouse that smelt like a barn, and then went to explore the fort. And in the fort we found our safari! A couple of hours on camels to get to the dunes, then camp out under the stars, and then the next morning a camelride back to our jeep. Nathan and I were joined by Paluica, a Jamaican living in Manchester who was incredibly good company an would eep us entertained by singing Florence + The Machine songs. That safari was an amazing experience! The ride is hard work on the thighs, but worth it. After snapping plenty of photos in the dunes whilst the sun set, our camel drivers started cooking, and madeus a delicious, yet spicy veg curry with rice and chapati. I tried my hand at making chapati, and it wasn'ta huge success... Oh well. And after listening to camfire songs and talking, we headed to bed. One of the camel drivers tucked Paluica and I in and made sure we were comfy. It wasn't so cold, and waking up around 3 am and seeing the stars after the moon had set was truly amazing. It seemed as if the stars were raining on you.

The next morning waking up with half of the desert in my sleeping bag was less amazing, but the cup of fresh chai by my blanket was. After showring and hauling most of the desert back with me in my rucksack, I bade my desert companions goodbye and jumped on a bus to Udaipur, where I am now. Udaipur has been given me much excitement for two reasons: I shall do a cooking course here tomorrow, and they filmed most of Octopussy here.