What's Taking So Long?

I've never thought I would long for Lowes or Home Depot, but trying to get some remodeling done in India does strange things to a person!

This is what we've got to work with. I've been meeting with designers, visiting showrooms looking at tiles and stone and faucets and sinks and poring over magazines to decide how I want it to look. Nothing happens fast here.

For The Vegetarians - Kadhi

This is one of my favorite things to eat - kadhi is a tangy, creamy, yogurt-based curry gravy with pakoras in it. Lots of curry leaves and mustard seeds add to the tangy flavor and it's generally served over rice.

Burra Kebabs And Kulfi

We usually eat in since Indra's food is so good, but the other day we were running round Delhi all day so we decided to stop for some takeout on the way home. We knew exactly what we wanted - burra kebabs from Swagath in Defense Colony Market.

From the menu: "Pesawari Barrah Kabab - tender lamb chaps (yes, chaps) marinated with sour cream, special herbs and condiments cooked in clay oven" These thick-cut lamb chops (they say lamb, but I have a feeling that most lamb is actually goat since I haven't seen many sheep around here) are the most tender, melt-in-your-mouth, delicious things I've ever had. The spices are subtle and rich and a nice Spanish Tempranillo or Garnacha would have been perfect with them but, alas, I had to settle for some Indian Sauvignon Blanc.

We ordered dal makhani, a super-rich, creamy black dal on the side and some thin roomali roti.

Rajiv also had to get some kulfi from the Defense Colony Market kulfi walla (a good one, there's always a line in front of his cart) which we had at home too. They serve the ice cream with vermicelli noodles and it ends up looking like ice cream soup. I have to say I'm not too crazy about noodles in my ice cream.

Mint Harvest - Where Pudin Hara Comes From

Our trip back down the mountain was made all the more eventful by Brahm Datt's car sickness. Apparently he only gets it on the way down, not on the way up or on level roads. We had to stop three times for the poor guy...

Once we made it back down it was smooth sailing through some pastoral Indian countryside. I kept seeing these interesting-looking contraptions in fields - big tanks that were filled with some kind of plants - so I asked Brahm Datt (also my go-to guy regarding all things agricultural since Rajiv is hopeless and the driver said they were for concrete!!) what they were.

It turns out they are for extracting mint oil from mint plants and all the lush green fields we were driving past were mint fields and all the oxcarts we were passing were filled with the harvested mint! We stopped near one and got out of the car to check it out (well, Brahm Datt and me at least) to the great joy and amusement of the poor guys working there and some passers-by who stopped to gawk at me gawking at the mint extracting process. In case anyone doesn't know the miracle that is Pudin Hara (Rajiv's cure for everything) check out http://www.dabur.com/en/products/Health_Care/Digestive/PudinHara/

Kashmiri Cherries In A Leaf Cup

That there are vendors hawking everything all over the place goes without saying, but the ones that were most enticing to me were the ones selling roasted corn on the cob and the ones selling little leaf cups filled (or so I thought) with delicious looking cherries, tiny apricots or some other kind of berry (goji berries maybe?).

The cherries looked so good I got some to munch on while we were on the boat. I handed over my 20 rupees and the guy handed over a little cup made of leaves with ripe red cherries.

We put on our lifejackets, climbed onto the boat and headed out onto the lake. The cherries were sweet and yummy but after eating down a layer, I realized that the little leaf cup had a little leaf shelf inside that effectively delivered half the cherries I thought I was going to get! Since Rajiv wasn't eating any cherries it was enough for me though.

So What Does One Do In Nainital?

If you're Rajiv, you spend time meeting with lawyers - the high court grounds are a lot nicer than the ones in Delhi! If you're the average Indian here on holiday you dress up in your outfit with the most sequins, sparkles and gold and walk up and down admiring all the stuff for sale from embroidered "Kashmiri" shawls and cheap plastic toys from China, to lacquered, odd-looking "sculptures" made from local pine cones or really ugly furniture.

There are no sidewalks which makes a stroll along the lake an exercise in avoiding traffic and tolerating the incessant 500+ decibel honking.

If you tire of the metropolis you can head up into the hills (along with 15,000 other people) to a point where you're supposed to be able to see the snowcapped Himalayas on a clear day (which it wasn't when we went). There you can dress up in a gold-trimmed velvet outfit to have your picture taken (for some unknown reason this seems to be a popular pastime in Nainital, you can have it done by the lake too) or you can shoot at plastic bottles strung between trees down the hillside.

Another popular attraction is the Cave Gardens where for 15 rupees you can experience nature in a setting that's devoid of any concept of liability litigation (as long as you don't spit). Here in the Cave Gardens you climb down narrow paths into natural caves (more like crevasses that have been opened up in the mountains) with absolutely nothing in the way of security. Slippery rock steps, low hanging rocks in narrow passageways, pits going down another 100 feet completely open next to the path just waiting for a child to slip into... It's an amazing sight to see fully decked out Indian women wearing sparkly saris, glittering jewelry and sandals picking their way over the rocks, through the narrow tunnels!

Taking a boat ride is the biggest deal in Nainital and from morning to night the little lake is swarming with long, gondola-like boats and those swan-shaped paddle boats. Naturally we had to take a boat ride and after visiting the Cave Gardens I found the fact that lifejackets were "compulsory" here rather ironic. For 160 rupees we were rowed up and down the lake, with only the honking in the distance to serenade us.

Destination Nainital

And by close association Tallital and Mallital also.

Unfortunately approximately 50,000 other people had beat us to it.

I had heard from someone who had just been there that the place was packed. School's out and families are on holiday. She wasn't wrong! After almost 2 hours navigating hairpin turns on a road that was about one and one-half lanes wide trying to avoid oncoming trucks, buses, cars and the random cow on the side of the road we made it to Nainital ready to collapse - and we weren't even driving (although it's more nerve-wracking being a passenger in a car driven by a flatlander who's never driven in mountains before - if I could shift gears with my left hand I would have taken the wheel).

We paid our 100 rupees to get onto the main drag of Nainital - the Mall. The town is squeezed along the steep slopes of the lake and there just isn't enough room for people + cars + bicycle rickshaws and as a result everyone is honking all the time. In a country where honking is a national pastime, it reaches shrill new levels here.

We checked into the Lakeside Inn (no stars, not even a comma) and ventured out to find some food. We ended up getting Chinese takeout from a place down the road - we are actually not that far from China here but that didn't make the food any better...

I fell asleep after the honking and the air hockey noise from the arcade downstairs stopped and woke up to chanting from the temple across the lake (and more honking).

Road Trip To The Mountains

Well, to the foothills actually...

The road to Nainital heads east out of Delhi up into hill country, the foothills of the Himalayas. Sounds romantic and exotic right? First you have to pass through Uttar Pradesh which is undoubtedly one of the filthiest places I've ever seen and I've spent a lot of time in New Jersey.

It's quite depressing actually. Poverty, dust and dirt are one thing but acres of garbage, garbage lining the roadside, garbage piles next to the marketplaces, garbage piles spilling over into the ponds, rivers and canals - it's like people just dump their garbage everywhere. Doesn't anyone care? It's really a shame because UP is home to the Taj Mahal and Varanasi among other sites and it's considered the cradle of Indian civilization.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant (Classic Chicken Point where we got some tea but you could also order "butter tost with jaim" for 20 rupees) then hit the road again wondering why the traffic was so heavy.

Something was definitely going on and a lot of people were headed for it. It turns out we were driving into Garmukteshwar on the last day of the Ganga Dusshera Festival, a 10-day long festival devoted to the worship of holy river Ganga where devotees flock to numerous ghats located on the west bank of the river Ganga to bathe in water and carry the river clay home to venerate (thank you Google search). As we crossed the bridge over the Ganges (the first time I was seeing the Ganges River!) we could see hundreds if not thousands of people in the river and on the shores - quite an impressive sight!

On our way back to Delhi we drove across the same bridge at night and I could see large fires burning along the riverbanks. I asked Brahm Datt (being a pandit, he's my go-to guy for questions regarding all things Hindu) if they were funeral pyres but he said cremation isn't supposed to take place at night. But what if the fire was started during the day and it's not done burning everything up completely by the time it gets dark???

They have the craziest looking taxi/trucks in UP! Maybe they go over the top decorating their vehicles to compensate for the bleak, garbage-filled scenery that blights the landscape in so many places?

Time

I've been reading (finally) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and came across a quote that sheds some light on Indians' concept of time (or lack thereof).

..."no people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on time."

The word is kal and it goes even further, the word for the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow is the same too (parson) as is the word for two days before / after (narsom)

Is that why they're never on time?

Indra And My Daily Meals

This is Indra. she and I have a hard time communicating but I have learned to say yeh khanna bahut badhiya hai (this food is delicious) because it always is!

I've gotten into the habit of eating a stuffed paratha for breakfast along with a small bowl of yogurt and some leftover vegetables - this is truly the breakfast of champions although I think I'll have to do the decathalon to lose the weight I'm sure to put on eating this every day.

For lunch she usually fixes rice, dal (a different kind every day) a vegetable and sometimes some meat. Dinner is pretty much the same except we get hot, homemade chapatis with it and either a lamb or chicken curry. I don't know how she does it, but everything she makes is delicious. My tolerance for spicy food has increased, although she doesn't overdo the heat generally.

I know I'm spoiled, but this is the life!

Beauty Hut Parlour

If you're ever in the Karol Bagh area and need a new hairstyle stop by the Beauty Hut Parlor, near the Jhandewala Deviji Temple !