Fast Food

In Britain we're used to Indian fast food, the takeaway, arriving at our front door in tin foil boxes stacked on top of each other in a plastic bag. In India itself, fast food is a lot more than dishes from a restaurant menu delivered to your door. Indeed India has a deeply entrenched, all-pervasive culture of fast food, at the heart of which is a love for snacks which transcends cultural differences between states, social divisions of class and caste, and gaps between generations. Across the country, in the biggest metro city and the smallest rural town, a huge variety of instant and enticing cooked and uncooked food is served out of tiny shacks, off the back of wooden carts and from brightly painted mobile stalls. During my ride home each day the auto-rickshaw passes a Pani Puri seller whose cart is always, always, surrounded by four or five people standing in a loose group whose jaws will be furiously working on the overfilled Puri they've just gobbled up. As well as these cobbled together street food outlets, there are more formal roadside dhabbas, India's greasy spoon cafés, that serve quick eats and filling cheap dinners.

Whether eaten standing in front of a cart or sat in a plastic chair at a vaguely clean table, the fast food on offer can be deliciously appetizing. From Pao Bhaji, Pani, Bhel and Sev Puri, to Poha and Mumbai's Vada Pav, you are guaranteed spice, the tang of chopped coriander, the heat of green chillies or the crunch of crisp puris. A favourite of mine is Pao Bhaji, which combines a thick tomato sauce swimming in butter and garnished with fresh coriander and broken cashew nuts (the Bhaji) with small buns that are slit in half, toasted and buttered so that their rounded tops glisten with grease (the Pao). You dip the buttery Pao into the Bhaji or spoon the sauce onto the half buns. If you use up your Pao before finishing the Bhaji it is perfectly acceptable to order an extra round, at least in my company. We often get our Pao Bhaji fix from a simple roadside eatery near our flat in Ahmedabad. This place, 'Shivshakti Pao Bhaji Corner', has a lockup space on the end of a row of shops. The lockup is grimy with dirt and grease, but the food is cooked on a cart parked to one side. In front of the lockup is a space for tables and chairs, separated from a busy crossroads, and its traffic and fumes, by nothing more than a single line of parked scooters and motorbikes. Despite the fumes we love eating there.

Another of my favourites is Poha, a dish made from rice and flavoured with mustard seeds, green chillies, salt, curry leaves and sometimes sugar and peanuts. There must be some turmeric involved too because the rice is a rich yellow colour. Poha is commonly eaten for breakfast in Western and Northern India, and sometimes served with an accompanying spicy subzi or sauce. In Gujarat it often comes garnished with finely chopped onion, tomato and coriander, and this may be common in other states too. In Ahmedabad I've had Poha from a cart at the side of the road and worked my way through a plate of the stuff with zeal, before watching the seller prepare another batch from rice soaked in warm water. At first it looks a lot like wet, mushy newspaper, but once it's been added to a pan lined with hot oil it is transformed into a dish ready to be sold.

No discussion of fast food in India is complete without a detailed description of Pani Puri. It is impossible to walk down almost any busy street in an Indian city without seeing a Pani Puri stand with its glass front displaying piles of hollow, crisp puris waiting to be filled and eaten. To make Pani Puri, sprouted moong dal, small chickpeas and a spicy brown sauce are spooned into each of these puffed balls made from wheat flour. The Puri is then dunked into a tureen of green water, the pani, and handed to the eagerly waiting customer. When you put the puri in your mouth and chew, crisp crunch mingles with the firm moong and chickpeas, and is drowned by the sloshing pani that escapes as the puri is shattered. Pani Puri can be delicious, but because the pani may or may not be potable, it can also prove debilitating. Both Dani and I have spent several days in bed as a result of eating it and not only because we had not yet adjusted to the local common bacteria. Even locals can succumb, as a colleague of mine did after indulging his love for the food at the wrong stall in Delhi, and spend days struck by severe sickness. The snack clearly has something of a reputation for having this effect; there are branded Pani Puri stalls that advertise their product as 100% 'bac-free'.

On college campuses in Delhi, instant fast food has been taken to another level. Here you can buy plates of Maggi noodles, the packaged instant noodles beloved by bachelors and those studying for their bachelors that are available in every supermarket and general store. Somehow though there's something special about these particular noodles, something that makes them taste better than when they're made at home over a hob. Perhaps it's the effect of eating them outdoors. Or maybe they taste better because, as with other street food, there's a whole experience around buying and eating them. Part of street food's appeal is the speed and simplicity with which it's made while you wait and watch. And of course you get to eat delicious food without having to do any hard work.

The saddest thing I’ve seen

The saddest thing I've seen I saw in the town of Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan. I was standing in the main street, near the bus station and at the intersection of several small roads with this big one. A friend and I had come out to buy some things from one of the general stores that line this busy street and we were standing just under the awning of one particular store on the corner of one of the small roads. In front of us were shelves of toothpaste, shampoo and soap; at our feet were Hessian bags filled with pulses, rice and dried red chillies. While we stood and waited for one of the shop boys to find what we had asked for, a group of four or five ragged, dishevelled boys and girls, all about six or seven years old, their hair matted and dirty, came wandering past. We had passed them earlier on the side road and they had been scavenging for rubbish: plastic bags, drinks bottles and other refuge. They were probably from a community of rag pickers. They didn't make much noise but were talking to one another in snatches of conversation as small children do, taking things off each other and generally going about what they were doing in a child-like way. When they had already passed the shop in front of which we stood, one of the shop boys, younger than the others working there, suddenly jumped into life and ran out onto the street to shout at them to come back. And around the corner they came, looking expectantly into the shadow under the awning to see what they were being given. The boy who had ran out to call the children back had gone into the depths of the store to fish something out and now reappeared with a cardboard box full of used packaging, plastic bags and clear plastic wrap. He held this aloft as he squeezed past us and the piled bags of dried goods on the floor, and stepped just beyond the awning's shadow to upend the box onto the floor. As the bags and wrapping fell and scattered onto the dusty ground the small group of children, whose eyes had lit up at the sight of the box overflowing with rubbish, tumbled forward in a scrambling dash to grab with both hands the unwanted packaging at their feet. As they did so the shop boy broke into a peal of laughter and his delight spread to the rest of the workers in the store, who peered past us with big grins to see the drama of desperation playing out on the ground in front of their shop. The boy, perhaps seven or eight years older than the children scrambling on the ground, looked back at his colleagues and cracked some comment to make them break into brief laughter too. The shop workers were not well off, but the simple fact of their having jobs meant they could find simple amusement in the misery of these children who were clearly in a much worse position. This was a snapshot of mankind's ugliness that left me feeling sick. I hope it's the saddest thing I ever see.

Into the Mountains – Part IV (Reaching Kathmandu)

We left Leh the day after visiting Thiksey and were sorry to leave: the week had been a satisfying mixture of relaxation and adventure. Returning to Delhi after the clean air of Ladakh was also hard. It was hot when we landed and it took us a while to find an auto wallah outside the airport willing to accept a reasonable price, so we were sweating by the time we started off towards Pahaganj. We were looking for somewhere to hole up for a few hours until it was time to catch the train East. To get to Nepal we had to travel across much of Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest and largest states. From Gorakhpur, on the state's Eastern side, we would travel to Sunauli on the Nepali border and then make our way to Kathmandu, even further to the East. There are no railways in Nepal; we would be travelling this last stretch of the journey by road.

Once back in Pahaganj we tried to get a room for just a few hours at Vivek Hotel but had our request to this effect bluntly refused. Instead we climbed a steep flight of stairs to reach 'Sam's Café', a rooftop restaurant of dubious quality, but a refuge nonetheless. This was a perfect spot to while away a few hours and after a cheap and not particularly nice breakfast of fried eggs, toast and greasy fried potatoes and onion, we ordered the occasional cup of chai to justify taking up a table. In hindsight we needn't have bothered doing this: the staff were not the sort to worry about table occupancy and in any case the place wasn't busy. We sat under an awning at a rickety table, cooled by wobbly ceiling fans suspended above us. The added benefit of Sam's Café was that we could walk to the station in ten minutes. Even this made us sweat profusely but we were spared the need to find an auto. Once safely on the train, with the sweat drying on us in the air conditioned compartment, I got talking to our neighbours, one an engineer with the Indian Air Force ("How well are aviation engineers paid in the UK?", he asked) , the other a telecom sales rep ("What is the telecom market like in the UK?").

After an uneventful overnight journey, the train pulled into Gorakhpur Junction at 4.30 in the morning and we bundled our full bags out onto the platform to find that the early morning was hot and heavy in UP. The vestiges of air conditioned sleep left us bit by bit as we struggled over the footbridge to the station exit. The platform smelt unclean and around the incandescent tube lights that lit up the night hoards of sticky insects bumped and wriggled. A long, black, flying earwig landed on the bag I was carrying. I shook it off with a horrified shudder. We walked out to the station entrance where litter clogged a cattle grid in the road and sleepy cycle rickshaw wallahs reclined on the open seats of their vehicles. We were a long way from safe, incense-tinged Ahmedabad and important, touristy Delhi. In front of us lay a very different India: mildewed, damp and reeking. A creeping rot seemed to be slowly taking over the town, with each building leeching paint from the ground up. Alongside the crumbling, potholed roads ran channels of stagnant water; discarded rubbish held in the water's black grip. This was the state where a former school teacher had created a political phenomenon by singularly satisfying the opposed political interests of high and low caste groups, and amassed a personal fortune of 'campaign donations' while Chief Minister.

The sky was beginning to lighten and we made our way down a wet road to the bus station. Here we waited until 6.00, morose and gritty eyed with sleep. At about 5.30 it started to rain. Around us men in vests and dhotis squatted next to produce or a travel bag, either ignoring us or eyeing us up. A tail-less brown cow wondered in amongst the thin crowd and left a steaming cowpat smeared across the grubby floor before being chased out into the puddled yard. Finally we gave up on the municipal bus and went to find a private one, which, once we boarded, waited for another hour while the driver revved the engine and pretended to pull into the road to attract a few last passengers.

It took three hours to reach the cluster of shops known as Sunauli on the Indian side of the Nepali border. But it felt like longer. The bus was cramped and damp and ever more passengers seemed to crowd on to stand in the aisle. At Sunauli we exited onto muddy ground and headed up the single road towards where we assumed the border to be. India and Nepal have an agreement on an open border for their respective citizens, who can cross without obtaining visas, and settle and work without needing any paperwork. There is little to see at the border as a result. Two archways mark the boundaries between a meaningless no man's land that ends two hundred metres either side of the crossing point. Once our passports were stamped in an open fronted and sparse Indian immigration office squeezed into the line of shops, we picked our way across to the Nepali side. Two weeks earlier the Maoists led by 'Prachanda' had won an unexpected election victory in what was now no longer a Hindu Kingdom. Above the road the Nepali archway had been daubed with red lettering that spelt out 'Federal Republic of Nepal, CPN (Maoist)'.

We had our passports stamped and paid the visa fee in dollars, the only currency the laid-back officials would accept. This fee is presumably a not insignificant source of hard currency for the government, given how little Nepal exports. Nepal is a very poor country, in fact one of the poorest. A majority of the population live in rural areas and have largely missed out on development gains while corrupt politicians in Kathmandu have squabbled amongst themselves and squandered what national wealth there is (one key source of national income is hydroelectric power generation, which brings in cash from India where unmet electricity needs are massive). In the last twenty years the country has earned itself a reputation for political instability and violent rural conflict, the latter courtesy of the same Maoists now forming the government. On the day we arrived a bandh (strike) had been called in Belahiya, the Nepali name for the line of buildings and lock-up shops that straddles the border. About 200 metres from the arched border crossing a tire was burning slowly in the centre of the road and further on two buses were blocking traffic. The previous day the police, who now stood around in groups in their riot gear and distinctive blue and grey camouflage uniforms, had shot and killed two locals. The bandh was the local population's angry reaction.

We were exhausted after the night on the train and early morning bus ride, and not in the right frame of mind for added complications. Unfortunately the strike meant that no buses would be leaving for Kathmandu and we were forced to trudge here and there with our bags to find an alternative. Eventually we were guided to an agent who sold us two seats in a big Tata jeep that was leaving for the capital. These turned out to be the last two seats on the very back row of the nine seat vehicle and we squeezed in beside a German man called Johanas. He was from Heidelberg and had been studying at Delhi University's prestigious Delhi School of Economics. Now he was working for an NGO, making films about tribal people in Rajasthan. Like us he was heading to Kathmandu to apply for a new visa. With the highway blocked, our only option was to negotiate back roads, as vehicles trying to force their way through strikes are often stoned. So we took a side road out of Belahiya and were soon on dirt tracks snaking in between sunken fields and cutting through villages of wattle and thatch houses. With every bump and pothole we lurched about in the back of the jeep and occasionally my head was bashed hard against the metal roof. We spent about an hour splashing along muddy roads before gaining the metalled highway well clear of the strike. On several occasions we had come close to being stranded when the long wheel base jeep had failed to make it over the rutted, muddy ramps that covered concrete field drainage pipes running underneath the road.

Once onto the highway we could relax somewhat, although we were cramped and uncomfortable on our small seat in the back. The three people in front of us, a young Nepali man and an elderly Indian and his wife, slept solidly throughout most of the journey and eventually even we managed to doze off for short periods. It was a nine-hour drive to Kathmandu and the route took us from the flat farmland of the Terai plain up into the wooded hills of the interior. After about five hours we were well into the high hills and following the winding course of a wide and fast flowing river. The road we were on cut into the side of a wooded gorge that rose up either side of the muddy waters. As we twisted and turned with the road the view of the distant ridgelines and the river kept me wholly absorbed, enchanted by what I saw. On the opposite side of the valley the odd hut could be seen, surrounded by terraced farmland, and we passed several rope bridges strung across the empty wide space above the churning river. On the roadside were tea stalls and snack shops; little more than wooden shacks, perched on the tarmac's edge. Some stood on stilts out over the steep slope below the road. Their owners lead a constrained existence, the land rising steeply upwards from the road on one side and dropping away sharply on the other. There is nothing for them to do but follow the tarmac up or down.

We didn't pull over on the road but instead stopped in a larger settlement for a late lunch/early dinner of dal baat, the Nepali national dish of rice, dal, subzi and rotis. This cheap meal was not appetizing: the dal flavourless, the rotis dry. Then when we went to get back into the jeep we found two men sat on the middle and back rows. It turned out the driver was greedy and wanted to squeeze these two in with us for the last three hours to Kathmandu. Our German companion frowned but didn't use his Hindi to ask the two men to get out, so I stepped forward and used international sign language for 'get out now'. I was pretty annoyed; it was cramped enough with three people on the back seats. Four was a joke. Thankfully there was no argument and we left the interlopers on the pavement when we finally drove off.

It was dark by the time we at last started to descend into Kathmandu from the surrounding hills. We followed an empty dark road that bent this way and that, affording us glimpses between buildings of the city laid out on the valley floor. It was before midnight but everywhere seemed still and quiet. The city was dark; only the odd light picked out a building in the night. We were stopped at a police roadblock on the outskirts of the city but quickly waved on. To our dismay the jeep didn't take us beyond the outskirts, instead stopping off an empty road that was soon flooded by half a dozen predatory taxis. We had no choice but to take one and paid over the odds for the privilege of a five minute journey to Durbar Square in the city's centre. Johanas knew a hotel off Freak Street, the old central drag of the hippie era, so being new to the city we followed his lead.