FOOD (part 2)

We've arrived in Diu after a long long trip. I think we were in motion for 17 hours straight on various buses and rickshaws. The sleeper bus turned out to be quite nauseating and neither of us got much sleep. Now we've got a small room close to the water right near the fruit and vegetable market. This morning we went and bought some guavas, bananas, nuts, roses, cookies and this crazy fruit that resembles a puffy artichoke and can be pulled apart easily. It tastes kind of like lychee.

We've eaten some pretty delicious stuff here in India. We've visited some ritzy restaurants where meals are expensive - but still a fraction of what it would cost in Canada. But I think some of the best meals we've had have been quite simple: sharing a couple of dishes like mattar paneer (peas and cheese) and dum aloo (stuffed potatoes) and a plate of naan bread. Yum! Fresh lime sodas are always a safe bet for drink, but fresh juice and lassis are fun too when the place seems clean. Yesterday, after checking in, I drank the water from a young green coconut Pete got off the street. Subtle flavour, quite nice. Palm trees are all over the place here and actually the vegetation growing in this province(Gujarat) seems much more lush; more cactai, more flowering trees.

Here are some food photos from the last month or so:


vegetable dosa at the Indian Coffee House, Shimla

baked trout in Minali - so so good

fancy dessert at the Crystal Restaurant, Amritsar

after dessert we went to a well known hole in the wall for amritsari fish: white fish with garlic, lemon, ginger, chilli ... deep fried - amazing

Ronald chillin' in New Delhi (we haven't eaten here - yet)

super duper sweets shop at LMB, Jaipur

while I had a lager beer, Pete had a large bear

really nice and spicy fish meal in Udaipur

I go bananas

After a rather lazy week in Udaipur, we're heading towards (the beaches of) Diu tonight. We'll take a sleeper bus to Rajkot, arrive tomorrow morning, grab breakfast, then take another ~7 hr bus to Diu.

It's tough to get a good breakfast in this place. We've waited away many mornings this week for cold toast and uncooked eggs. We did, however, find a great juice stand called Pap's that serves a fantastically fresh pomegranate/pineapple/ginger juice for Rs 40 (i.e. one dollar). I go bananas for it, plus it's good for the cold I caught. And Udaipur is speckled with rooftop restaurants with great views of the city and lake - which make long waits and mediocre food much more enjoyable.

The cows and bulls that fill the streets are feisty, and a few have hustled us a little. I did, however, meet a very nice young bull this morning and spent 5 minutes rubbing his neck, ears and nose.

There isn't a lot to do around here, so we've spent a lot of time hanging out in a cafe playing cards. We did, however, experience an evening of traditional Rajasthani dance the other night which totally blew me away. Women with exquisite balance dancing and spinning with pots of fire on their heads, a shimmering peacock dance, a puppet show, and the finale: a woman stacking metal pots on her head and doing tricks. She got up to 9. Six pots were stacked on her noggin when a man came out and poured broken glass on the ground. She then stomped and danced upon it. Hahahaa, how crazy is that?! The best Rs 60 I ever spent.


Here are a few pictures from Udaipur:


the world's largest turban!

new friend

floating palaces from fancy rooftop

Octopussy

Greetings everyone!

If you're interested in seeing what life is like in Udaipur, and being entertained at the same time, go rent the James Bond movie Octopussy (Roger Moore). A few of the magnificent palaces around here are shown and the city life is pretty accurate, except there is more dirt, garbage, and traffic.

The Taj Mahal

The Sleeper Train and the Case of the Lost Wallet

Hello everyone! We have successfully survived an overnight sleeper train from Jaipur to beautiful Udaipur and are staying in the lovely Hotel Hanuman Ghat. We're planning on relaxing here for several days before hitting the road again.

The Case of the Lost Wallet
Being the wise man that I am, I neglected to remove my wallet from my pants pocket before going to sleep on the train. I was on the upper of three two-foot wide berths, and Stephanie was on the middle one. I rolled around quite a bit during the night, trying to maximize my comfort the best that I could (no matter how futile it seemed to be).

On the fifth time that I woke up, I had the realization that my wallet may have fallen out of my pocket, so I searched my pants, but it was not there. I searched my kurta, but it was not there either. Ohhhhh boy. I looked around and noticed that the man that was sleeping on one of the lower berths on the other side of the cart was no longer there. Did he take my wallet and book it? Ohhhh boy.

I searched my pockets again. I searched my kurta again. No wallet. It's okay I thought, just relax, perhaps I put it in my bag, but I really not no hope that it was there. And it wasn't. Ohhhh boy. So, I checked my pockets again. I scoured my kurta again. No wallet.

I grabbed my flashlight, hopped down to the floor and looked around, and luckily enough, there it was. EUREKA! I grabbed my now dusty beast and stuffed it carefully in my bag, zipped it up and climbed back to my bed where I thought about how lucky I was before falling back asleep.


Anyway, today is the big day for Diwali, so make sure you celebrate with plenty of lights and maybe some fireworks.

Happy Diwali

Today is the first day of the 5 day Diwali festival. We are in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, it is night time and the city is glowing brightly with tiny butter lanterns, firecrackers and gaudy, blinking light displays. We enjoyed the view very much from the 14th floor of the Om Hotel, in the revolving restaurant!

We've been traveling quite intensely the last few days, have covered a lot of distance. It hasn't always been pleasant. After spending 2 nights at the Golden Temple in Amritsar (which is an amazing place that swept me off my feet that I'd like to talk about for a minute just here inside these brackets ... All are welcome; it is a sanctuary! Waves of people sit in lines on the floor, their plates filled with dahl, rice, vegetables and chapati bread [which is made by machine apparently, and is actually not very good but it doesn't matter much because it is a gift]. That's right, free food - and accomodation. They feed ~40,000 people a day. It doesn't matter who you are; if you are hungry, you are fed. The temple itself is lovely, and we waited in a long, sweaty line the first day to see inside, but enjoyed much more walking around barefoot [before entering one must remove ones shoes, wash ones feet and cover ones head] on the white marble around the temple at night. I felt so peaceful during those walks.) Where was I? Yes, after spening 2 nights at the Golden Temple, we got on a sweet 5am luxury train to Delhi, had lunch and then took a bicycle rickshaw to the bustand where we learned no bus from there went to Agra, so we got on one of those crazy Indian city buses you read about for a half hour ride to another bus stand where we hopped on another one of those buses you read about for a 6 hour ride to Agra. After crashing, we woke early EARLY to go to the Taj Mahal for sunrise. It was spectacular, and we joined in with everyone else in photo fever. (We were more goofy than the rest though.) After breakfast we got a supposedly delux bus for a ride to our current location, Jaipur, which took way too long because of all the stops made to pick up and drop off bags of some sticky sugar liquid that dripped on us and our stuff.

Tomorrow night we plan to head to Udaipur on a sleeper train. We've heard it's very nice there and I'm hoping it's somewhere we'll want to spend some more time. The worst thing about many of the places we've passed through lately has been the air quality. I feel like in the last week I've shaved some chunk of time off my life just from inhaling so much air thick with exhaust and garbage burning. The garbage burns are brutal - on every corner around here. Gahyuck! Please take a deep breath in and, if you're lucky enough, enjoy your relatively pure dose of oxygen.

P.S. There are lots of camels in this province!

Fifty Percent!!

Believe it or not, we've made it 50% through our trip! Day 57. It feels good.

We left Dharamsala for Amritsar yesterday afternoon. The start of the ride was incredibly beautiful. Driving through Kangra we got to see the Himalayas in all their glory. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any photos, so you'll just have to trust us that it was amazing.

The bus took us to Pathankot where we decided we'd get a train to Amritsar for.... EIGHTEEN RUPEES!!! We couldn't even believe the cost for this supposed 3 hour train ride over 107km, but when we finally got on it ended up being fairly comfortable. Perhaps our definition of comfort has decreased since arriving in India. The train wobbled when it finally got going, but spent half the trip sitting around waiting for other trains to pass the single track that was available to us.

So we're here now. Amritsar, home of Golden Temple. This place is equivalent to the Vatican for Sikhs. It's a wondrous site. We're staying overnight for a crazy slumber party with the Indians in one of the many dormitories they have available for free (by donation).