I love Delhi. Adrian loves Delhi. We love Delhi. It is buslting, it is dirty, you can't lose focus for even one second because you will be run over, but it beats with a pulse that is organic and palpable. A living breathing organism (that possibly needs some serious ayurvedic treatments and a petrol-fume patch to wean itself off the hard stuff).
One of our delights has been to discover that our guesthouse is nowhere near any tourist part of town. This means that when we went to the nearby busy Karol Bagh area for some shopping (hello custom made pinstripe suit) we were by far the only white people there, which isn't so true of the tourist beats of Connaught Place and Paharganj. The first day we found food in a restaurant whose sister establishment had only wall menus in Hindi. People watched us eat and a young girl laughed at us (for reasons that remain a mystery as we were really doing our best to copy what everyone else was doing, which to be frank was quite random. Well, truth be told, she laughed at Adrian, and it may have been his visor that set her off. Haven't seen many visors in India. So far, anyway.)The food in Karol Bagh is awesome. All locals, all the time, eating, eating, eating out, embracing their middle-classness. The food has to be good because it is competing with very accessible home-cooking. So far we have been most often enjoying thalis, which are a way of serving small portions of many different meny items and usually include rice and chappatti or roti and sometimes even tasy fried puri (all breads).
This has been easiest for us as we get to sample many things, usually vegetarian, and not have to worry about 'choosing right'. Plus we are usually so overstimulated when we sit down to eat that choosing just two dishes from a huge list seems to overwhelming.
Our Delhi guesthouse also had yummy food, although not such great prices, so we usually only breakfasted there every other day.
One of our delights has been to discover that our guesthouse is nowhere near any tourist part of town. This means that when we went to the nearby busy Karol Bagh area for some shopping (hello custom made pinstripe suit) we were by far the only white people there, which isn't so true of the tourist beats of Connaught Place and Paharganj. The first day we found food in a restaurant whose sister establishment had only wall menus in Hindi. People watched us eat and a young girl laughed at us (for reasons that remain a mystery as we were really doing our best to copy what everyone else was doing, which to be frank was quite random. Well, truth be told, she laughed at Adrian, and it may have been his visor that set her off. Haven't seen many visors in India. So far, anyway.)The food in Karol Bagh is awesome. All locals, all the time, eating, eating, eating out, embracing their middle-classness. The food has to be good because it is competing with very accessible home-cooking. So far we have been most often enjoying thalis, which are a way of serving small portions of many different meny items and usually include rice and chappatti or roti and sometimes even tasy fried puri (all breads).
This has been easiest for us as we get to sample many things, usually vegetarian, and not have to worry about 'choosing right'. Plus we are usually so overstimulated when we sit down to eat that choosing just two dishes from a huge list seems to overwhelming.
Our Delhi guesthouse also had yummy food, although not such great prices, so we usually only breakfasted there every other day.
I found the thali image at www.messandnoise.com
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