In 2001 I discovered the joy of food, changing my life forever. This was the year I became a boarder at Clayfield College. It must have been the combination of being a growing teenager with the knowledge that the provision of food in this place was limited to pre-determined times of day and the fact that food does indeed taste better in company – there were about a hundred of us in the Clayfield College Boarding House dining room each night. Two years later I arrived in Kuala Lumpur and discovered Malaysian street food. I had five years to develop a palette as well as a stomach for spicy oriental cuisine. Along the way I fell in love with two sambal (a chili based sauce) dishes: 1) sambal udang (prawn) and 2) sambal kangkung (water spinach). Even after leaving food-crazy KL for bland Perth my appetite has remained ferocious. Good-food-hunting is one of my favourite interests and I most definitely consider myself in the category of those who live to eat. Therefore, it was only essential that over my 23 days in India, a land known for its dynamic array of gastronomical offerings, that I kept a record of my every meal…

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FOOD INDEX
aloo = potato
chai = mixed-spice tea
dahlfry = yellow lentils
lassi = yoghurt-based drink
rajma = red kidney bean curry

REFLECTIONS
En route from Shimla to Kaza I assumed I was being taken for a foreign fool when a Spitian banana vendor refused to sell me bright yellow ones claiming they were too raw while the patchy brown ones were perfect to eat. So one day I managed to buy yellow ones much like ones I would have chosen in a supermarket in Perth to find that they were indeed pasty and hard. I waited for five days, in which time the remaining bananas had ripened slightly but no where near as edible as the almost too-ripe-looking patchy brown ones. Lessons learned: 1) bananas are not the same the world over and 2) local vendors are not always lying swindlers.

SUMMARY
Over my 23 days in India I had 19 cups of Chai, 7 Lassi’s (of which two were flavours I’d never come across before: papaya and litchi), 3 Naans, 4 Roti’s, 6 Chapati’s, 10 Paratha’s (mainly at breakfast), Dahlfry four days in a row and some form of Aloo 11 out of my total 23 days in the country. When it comes to world cuisines I consider myself very openminded, but after almost one full month of Indian meals I think I’ll give myself a good break between my next tasting of dahl and roti.