The Cutlery Chronicles: south India

Showing posts with label south India. Show all posts

Sunday, 18 January 2015

Week 4: INDIA - Pondicherry → Chennai → Mumbai

Image of the week: Pondicherry Street (more images at end of post)
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Where in the world

A four hour train from Madurai to Pondicherry, situated on the east coast of the state of Tamil Nadu, then an hour drive to the French quarter where we stayed for two nights.

Back to the station, then a four hour train to Chennai, staying there for two nights. A flight back to Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra for round two, where we stayed for three nights.

Thoughts

When the French were in Pondicherry in the first half of the nineteenth century, they laid out their streets in a formal grid pattern - this was White Town (over the canal - or the 'Drain' - was the Tamil quarter, or Black Town).

Today, many of the buildings lie derelict, some falling apart through a combination of lack of maintenance and heavy monsoon rains, framed by overgrown vines scaling crumbling walls. But as the French do so well, it's a town that manages to remain chic, with the rundown buildings adding to Pondicherry's European old-world charm and romance.

The roads are wider and the slower pace of Gallic life has remained. Predictably, the French tourists gravitate to this part of the country, making the most of the cafés, craft and book shops (as did we), to recharge and while away a few hours, a pastime easier said than done in the chaos that is India.

derelict chic in Pondicherry
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Chennai is 'the capital of the south' - a city of roaring traffic and heat, much like many others in India. It's a bit lacking on the sightseeing front, and some might say it's the dowdy sibling of India's four biggest cities. But the people love their hometown and are some of the most hospitable we've come across. There's a new layer of cosmopolitan glamour in the shape of luxury hotels, polished boutiques and contemporary restaurants still draw the crowds.

In all honesty, the ITC Grand Chola we stayed in (review to come) was so plush, and outside was so hot and dusty, that we spent little time exploring and more time relaxing and recharging - much needed after nearly four weeks moving around.

Then we were back in Mumbai for round two. Having time apart is a powerful thing. Perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder, but our second visit within the month felt like meeting an old friend. We had fully acclimatised to India by then - it seemed less of a culture shock, more inviting, more doable. We even joked about living there.

Specifically though, in Bandra, the suburb in west Mumbai the other half's grandmother grew up in, from the Parsi side of his family (see Did you know below). We spent two days with his great aunt Amy, looking through black and white photo albums from the 1800's, and visited the schools and roads the grandmother and her siblings called home in 1920's Bombay.

It's a charming part of the world, and an affluent one, with signs that prohibit horn honking and spitting (incessant everywhere else in the city), and where the Bollywood stars call home.

the house Matt's Grandmother grew up in. Bandra, Mumbai
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Amy volunteers four days a week at Happy Home School for the Blind. We popped in to say hello to the staff and children, and got a sense of the inspiring work done there. Boys from across the country (there is an equivalent school in the city for girls) - many of which were born with additional disabilities - are given the prospect of a future where there was none before. When they leave at 17, many go on to college and a lot of them into IT.

The best things I ate this week

Bhelpuri. A type of chaat (typical savoury roadside snack) made of puffed rice, vegetables and a tangy tamarind sauce. At Sangeetha Veg Restaurant, Chennai.

A really good Mulligatawny soup. Hot with a lot of pepper, great with a squeeze of lemon. Had at ITC Grand Chola, Chennai.

Mangochi pakauri. The whole thali meal at Royal Vega was a unique experience (more information on this in the ITC Grand Chola hotel review post). But my favourite was the ground mung daal, rolled into balls, spiced with dry fenugreek and red chilli, simmered in mung lentil and turmeric buttermilk, tempered with asafetida and white cumin - it was fantastic. At Royal Vega, ITC Grand Chola, Chennai.

Alu vadi. Also known as patra. Colocasia leaves are smeared with a sweet, spicy and tangy gram flour paste, stacked on each other, rolled, then steamed. They're then shallow or deep fried and are a popular Maharashtrian snack. A bit like fried artichokes, with meaty hearts. Enjoyed At Mama Kane's, Dadar, Mumbai. Thank you to @imbevda for taking us here.

from top left: bhelpuri, multigatawny soup, mangochi pakauri, alu vadi

the full thali meal at Royal Vega at the ITC Grand Chola in Chennai

Street food must-eat

Dahi vada. This is a popular chaat (streetside snack) where lentil dumplings are dunked in a creamy whipped yogurt topped with spicy green and sweet tamarind chutneys.

This one was enjoyed outside Shree Krishna Vada in Dadar, Mumbai. Thanks again to @imbevda for taking us here.

dahi vada, Mumbai

Local lingo

Madras Bashai or Madras Tamil, is a colloquial slang of the Tamil language spoken in Chennai.

Dhool! A superlative, as in "well done!" or "kick ass!".

It's likely from Hindi dhool (dust), referring to the dust cloud after a good ass-kicking. 'Dhool' is also used as Dhool kalappitai where kalappitai refers to the action of starting or kicking up (dust).

Did you know?

the skies above
the Tower of Silence, Mumbai

Parsis are Indian Zoroastrians, originating from Iran but settling in India in the tenth century, and Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions in the world.

Mumbai has a big expanse of green on Malabar Hill belonging to the Parsi people, called the Towers of Silence. When Parsi people die, their bodies are exposed on this tower to scavenging birds for the purposes of excarnation.

An incredible number of eagles and crows live in the forest on this hill and circle the skies above it. However, the number of vultures - the primary birds that would clear the bodies - are in decline.

Here's an interesting article in the New York Times about plans the Parsis had to build vulture aviaries to help replenish the numbers, but I'm not sure how far it's come.

Freddie Mercury was Parsi, and the three wise men from the Bible were said to be Zoroastrian priests. Bet you didn't know that.

My insider tips

Seatbelts in India. Get in a car in India and more often than not, it won't have seatbelts. Considering the style of driving there - generally with little value for human life - being in one whilst not being strapped in is an ordeal, particularly if the car gets a clear stretch and belts it over a flyover.

Notice, though, that the seatbelt is usually there, just not the socket. Turns out most of the cars do have fully working seatbelts, it's just the buckles are concealed under the seat. Before the driver sets off with you as a passenger, ask him to please take a moment to help you lift the seat and reveal the buckle - they should have no problem with it.

Highlight / Lowlight

Highlight. A joint one with Matt - spending time with Amy and being able to put faces and places to all the stories we've heard about his ancestors, right back to his great great grandparents.

Also, the langurous lunch we had at the Willingdon Sports Club, of which Amy is a member. It has exclusive membership and a long waiting list, playing host to Mumbai's answer to Desperate Housewives, while their husbands sip whisky and play golf in the vast grounds.

Lowlight. This week has been good to us on the whole; the one blip was dining in Pondicherry. On our first night we took advantage of the good European food available (my cravings for pasta after not having had any for almost a month were at crisis point), so we lost that evening to a carb overload.

The next night we intended to get acquainted with the unique Creole cuisine of the area. We went to Carte Blanche at the Hotel de L'Orient based on a Conde Naste article, and were given two curries which despite their rich and dark colour, managed to taste of absolutely nothing.

We told the waiter we weren't going to finish it and that it wasn't very good. Annoyingly, his supervisor wasn't in to authorise a refund so we still had to pay for rubbish food we barely touched. And it was one of the most expensive meals we've had in India - isn't that always the way.

Next week

Onwards to the spiritual capital of India, that most sacred of holy sites on the Ganges, Varanasi. After that, we move west into the state of Rajastan - the romantic India, wrapped in royal robes - spending time in Udaipur and Jaipur.

Postcards

Pondicherry

Pondicherry Beach

Pondicherry graffiti

Pondicherry

Pondicherry street art

Pondicherry

Pondicherry beach

Pondicherry

Pondicherry beach

Pondicherry

Chennai

tuk tuk in Chennai

Chennai

butcher in Chennai

Sunday, 4 January 2015

Week 2: INDIA - Bangalore → Mysore → Wayanad

Image of the week: kids on their school bus, Mysore (more images at end of post)

Where in the world

A flight to Bangalore where we spent one night (more of a stopover), then a two hour train to Mysore for three nights. We then left the state of Karnataka and moved further south into Kerala.

There was a two hour bus ride from Mysore to Wayanad where we stayed for two nights, then a seven hour overnight bus to Kochi.

Thoughts

Bengalaru (I much prefer its former name of Bangalore), is slick and high-tech. Huge billboards advertise the latest apartment complex to have been built, with names like 'Chartered Beverly Hills' and 'Utopia Layout'. People drive cars that haven't been battered and scuffed into next week, the roads are wide, well paved, and people stick to their lanes. It's easy to see why it's known as the 'Silicon Valley of India' - everyone looks like they've just come from the office.

We didn't get enough time to explore and with hindsight, I would have spent one night less in Mysore and one more here - I hear the food scene is pretty great. But then where in India isn't it.

Then there's Mysore, where sarees are brighter, skin is darker, smiles are bigger, and food is hotter. It's like the whole place has been tuned to high contrast. If this is textbook south India, then it's my kind of India.

I had my first proper encounter with Indian flowers in Devaraja Market. I'd heard about their potency and seen strings of them adorning the hair of the local women, but I had yet to experience them on this scale.

What must have been a bazillion pristine flower heads were tipped out of great delivery sacks and sold on in huge amounts to customers for weddings, parties, celebrations. Lotus, jasmine, roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, marigolds, more. Combined, the aroma was intoxicating and almost overpowering. There must have been tonnes of them.

Indian flowers in Devaraja Market, Mysore

Indian flowers in Devaraja Market, Mysore
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Wayanad is a district in the state of Kerala, known as 'God's own country', green with forests and plantations and the tall and dead straight thin trunks of palm trees. All the spices we love in Indian cooking thrive here thanks to the altitude and soil - ginger, cardamom, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, turmeric, vanilla, as well as swathes of tea and coffee bushes, bananas, and avocados that Indians don't really like and so are left to the monkeys.

Some days dawn to heavy mists rolling in, with moisture condensing on leaves and dripping as the sound of rain. Birds with bright colours flash across your path from one tree to another, and their are wildlife sanctuaries with elephants and tigers and indigenous hill tribes. Swoon.

from top left: cloves, ginger, pepper, coffee beans

The best things I ate this week

What to eat in Mysore

Thali. Thali meals are found all over India and are comprised of a selection of different dishes, this one being vegetarian and reflective of Andhra cuisine (hot and heavily spiced).

In the south they're often served on a banana leaf. This one included: vegetable fry (potatoes, cabbage, carrots), daal, tangy lime pickle, fresh yellow cucumber chutney, sambar (lentil based veg stew), spicy rasam (a South Indian soup with tamarind as a base), poppadom, curd and piping hot rice.

We had three free top ups of everything - the guy keeps coming round with it all and dishing out more. Each meal was 90 rupees, about 90p. This was also our first attempt at eating rice with a hand (see more on that below) - I think we did pretty well.

Meal had at RRR Hotel restaurant on Gandhi Square in Mysore, recommend by some local foodies.

Majjiga mirapakaya. Green chillies soaked in buttermilk, sun-dried, then deep-fried. They're crispy, salted, and very hot. Entirely addictive, and should these be matched with a cold beer, you have something quite special. These came with the above thali meal and are a typical Andhran accompaniment.

Aakki roti. A rice pancake unique to the state of Karnataka. It had onions, green chillies, grated coconut, coriander, cumin and also dill, which seemed unusual but was very good.

Masala abode. Deep fried spiced lentils and dillweed patties.

from top left: thali meal, majjiga mirapakaya, aakki roti, masala abode

Street food must-eat

Street food in Mysore

Dry gobi. There is a strip of street food vendors in Mysore called Chat Street on Krishna Vilas Road. One of the most sought after dishes from here is dry gobi - cauliflower florets coated in a spicy red sauce (curd, chilli powder, garlic, ginger, curry leaves), deep fried, served with a squeeze of lime, raw onions, and fried chillies. 30p for a plate. Excellent.

The people to get them from is father and son team Abid and Usman. The duo recently won the Best Street Food Award at the Oggarane Dabbi, a cookery competition organised by Zee Kannada, a regional channel.

dry gobi from Chat Street, Mysore

Local lingo

Verum peda \verum pedda\ - it acts as an exclamatory remark on something great

Usage:
- How was your meal?
- Verum pedda

Roots in the Malayalam language spoken in Kerala.

Did you know?

There are indigenous hill tribes in Kerala called the Paniyan people. Our guide for one of the days in the district of Wayanad is one of the very few who can speak their language, one which is only vocal and has no written word.

Because of his ability to communicate with them where others can't, he has unrivalled access to their communities.

We walked with him a little while into the forest and came across a family in one of these villages. They lead a primiative and simple life of mud huts, no electricity, and spring water gathered from a local stream.

The Paniyan people don't know how old they are as they don't use calendars or have documentation. The woman gradually increase the size of their ear piercings over time by stuffing them with rolled up leaves, significant in their culture. It's by the size of the hole in the ear lobe that an estimate of age is made.

They earn money by picking tea and coffee, with which they buy rice. If they haven't quite earnt enough, they supplement the rest of their diet with what they hunt and gather from the depths of the forest.

The picture below is of the matriarch of the family - a great face. The other is of their home - a very solid structure with a floor of dried cow dung. Pitch black but very cool inside.
The house is made up of two areas, one for living and one for sleeping and cooking, and three generations live in this modest home. The woman's daughters were too shy to come out, but the grandchildren did. As we were leaving, the three-year-old picked up a hoe and set to work on a patch of earth.

Our guide was fantastic - Sabu from www.wayanad-naturetours.com

a lady from the Paniyan tribe, Kerala

a Paniyan house, Kerala

My insider tips

How to eat rice with your hand. Rice is a staple in India, but becomes increasingly prevalent the further south you travel. Eating Indian food with your hands when bread is involved isn't too tricky - tear a piece off, scoop up some gravy and you're on your away. But eating with your hands when rice is involved is a lot trickier.

Through observation and practice, the trick is to combine rice with enough gravy to make it come together, but not too much that it becomes slop. Use your finger tips to rotate a mound of the mix on the plate until you get something you can sort of handle, pick up and pop into your mouth.

Etiquette dictates you wash your hands before eating, and you only use your right hand to handle the food. Expect to end up with rice all over your fingers, which seems to be the norm. When you're done, there will be basins at the back of the restaurant to wash your hands - you rarely get given serviettes.

Highlight / Lowlight

Highlight We had spent the day being driven around the district of Wayanad in a jeep with zero suspension that required a titanium strength sports bra to endure. Body broken and brain rattled, we finished off with a safari at Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary in the north of the district.

Driving around on tracks that had our arses coming off the seats by a good six inches, our guide spotted something from the corner of his eye, turned back to look behind the car and shouted 'elephant!'. There stood a pregnant female, grazing right by the track, with three more just behind her.

I asked if we could turn the enormously loud engine off but the vehicle must be kept running during elephant sightings, should it take a turn and start charging. 'Tigers no problem. Elephants - very dangerous,' said our guide. Seeing an asian elephant in the wild - pretty damn cool. And worth the bruised backside.

Lowlight We had to fly the day the Air Asia flight went missing. Tragic news at any time, but particularly unsettling when you intend to take quite a few flights over the coming months. It made for a less than pleasant wait in the airport lounge.

There was also a small bomb blast in Bangalore the night we arrived. Low intensity the news said, but one person who was walking past at the time died from their injuries.

pleased about the roadside picnic

The lowest point of this week though, was the overnight coach from Wayanad to Kochi. After waiting three hours for it by the side of a main road whilst setting up a makeshift roadside picnic to get some dinner inside us, the whole time inhaling black exhaust fumes from every chugging auto rickshaw and dilapidated local bus on its last legs, we had in that time forgotten to take our travel sickness pills.

Cue a seven hour journey sitting at the back, the first half of which was spent negotiating hairpin bends and feeling every steering wheel movement of a vehicle that was travelling too fast for the load it was carrying. We both felt as though we were about to see our dinner for a second time that evening for the duration of the journey. Add to this the fact we were caked in a day's worth of sightseeing sweat and dust, and you have the makings of a very uncomfortable journey.

We arrived at Heavenly Homestay at 4am to a wonderful couple who gave us the gift of a spotless room, a hot shower, and told us breakfast would be at whatever time we chose to get up. It felt like I'd been waiting to get clean and into bed for a week - it felt so good when I did.

Next week

A day in Kochi, one night on a houseboat through the backwaters of Allepey disembarking at Kollam, then onwards to the corner of India that is forever France, Pondicherry.

Postcards

Mysore