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Food, Glorious Food (Part II)

Last post I did a riff on the foods for which I was most homesick. Reading it later I realized that the whole thing must have looked like an enormous dis on the local foods that are available here. Rewalsar is home to Tso Pema (Lotus Lake) and religious sites that are holy to Tibetan Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus, and Western tourists who follow those religions. Local eateries offer foods meant to satisfy most pilgrims who stop in. So, in the interest of foodie fairness, this post is dedicated to the wonderful and the wacky about Rewalsar’s local cuisine.

Editrix’ note: Among the various Mommywizard philosophies is a belief that people who are “Adventurous Eaters”–the kind who happily tuck into whatever’s available, even if it consists of an unidentified roasted something on a stick–are also more adventurous sexually. As with food preferences in general, your mileage may vary. While we have found this rule of thumb to be generally true, we also know plenty of meat-and-potatoes style folks we would welcome in our beds should we find them there. Alrighty then. Back to the blog.

LOCAL PRODUCE. I noted last time that the only produce available is the stuff that’s in season–bringing out-of-season stuff to this remote area is something that people do only rarely for extremely close friends. Few people are wealthy enough to use a lot of pest controls and additives on their crops or herds. While this means that most food is by definition fresh and organic, it also means a little more effort at the produce wallah (vendor) picking out the cleanest, insect-free stuff. Most wallahs here get their deliveries on Monday. By Sunday night most restaurants are a little tapped out, and vegetable dishes may get a little skimpy.

Nonetheless, one thing we MommyWizards learned in Mexico is that nothing beats fresh produce that was picked only hours ago. In La Cineguita we were introduced to an organic farm where you walk right into the field with the farmer, and point out the exact radish or basil or chard you want her to harvest. In Rewalsar the early-week produce especially will have this freshness to it. The wallahs sort through their stock throughout the day. Anything that’s not survived the heat or the insects or the ride to market gets tossed out into the street for the next cow that wanders by.

WATER. Ordering “water” means getting an anonymous plastic or metal pitcher filled with water of unknown provenance, to pour into your glass or metal cup. If unknown Indian drinking water isn’t your cuppa tea, so to speak, order “Mineral water” to get the bottled stuff. Some places may not have drinking utensils at all–just a mutual pitcher. The correct thing to do with any shared drinking vessel is to pour the contents into your mouth, without having your lips touch the rim.

RESTAURANTS. Restaurants in Rewalsar do not function like Western restaurants. Y’all Have Been Warned. For starters, there may or may not be a menu. For most places, they’re not really necessary: you’re either in a Tibetan restaurant, an Indian dhaba, or a hotel that serves a little of both cuisines. Places like hotels that are used to serving a lot of out-of-towners tend to put out pens and pads of paper for guests to order on, rather than trust that everyone knows the exact same dialect of English, Tibetan, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, or Bengali. It’s a good idea to ask what the kitchen actually has available (see LOCAL PRODUCE, above), depending on what day of the week it is. It’s not unusual for the cook or a helper to dash out to the produce wallah for more palak (spinach), bhindi (okra), or brindjal (eggplant) to fill your order. Some places simply close once they’ve run out of stuff, especially meat. Once you’ve placed your order, be prepared to wait. Most orders in restaurant-style places are started from scratch after being ordered. Don’t bother waiting for a check–just before you leave, have the cook or helper tell you what you owe.

DHABAS. Dhabas are a peculiarly Indian fast food institution. A dhaba usually consists of a cement counter populated with a row of four or five pots, plus a wok-like karhai stationed over a nearby propane burner, with the cook standing behind the whole setup like a rock band drummer. There’s no menu. Dhabas tend to serve the same few staple items. Ordering is a free-form process. You can just order what you want of the standard stuff. Or, you can query the dhaba-wallah about what’s cookin’ today, and have him lift a pot lid or two to help you decide. Or, you can just order a “thali” (plate) of the day’s offerings. This gets you a round plate with rice, with a ladle-full each of the various chickpeas, curry, vegetables, and other things. A quasi-salad of cucumber and raw onion may come with the thali, as well as the ubiquitous metal cup of water.

Dhaba-wallahs are usually men. Dhabas hold the same culinary niche that 24-hour diners have in American cuisine. Punjabi truckstop dhabas are supposedly top-notch, the ones that come closest to home cooking, and many dhabas across the country advertise “Punjabi Truckstand cooking”. Take an overnight bus ride and at some point during the night the bus will pull into a brightly lit stall in the middle of nowhere, with the cook and his pots at the ready. If you befriend a dhaba-wallah, he may be open to cooking something to order for a “pot fee”, as long as you bring the items to be cooked, and give him enough notice. This is a boon for folks who may are either allergic to certain foods, or who want to take advantage of some super-fresh produce they found in the market that day.

TIBETAN SPECIALTIES: Westerners used to thinking of Buddhists as vegetarians tend to be surprised by Tibetan cuisine, a high-altitude diet that is heavy on meat (usually mutton), butter, barley and yogurt. Seasonings are also abbreviated–usually salt and a bit of onion. The “usual suspects” include:

Momos

Hefty dumplings that are usually steamed, and are also available fried. Momos come in three varieties, usually mutton, vegetable, or cheese. Tingmos are plain solid bread dumplings with no filling. Steamed meat momos are served with a bowl of koa alongside. This is a light broth made from the water that meat has been cooked in.

Thukpa

A soup made with spaghetti style noodles. Available in mutton and vegetable variations.

Thenthuk

A soup similar to thukpa, but with wide, home-made noodles.

“Tibetan Tea”

Tibetan-style tea is tea that has been brewed and then churned with milk, salt and butter. The salty flavor can be a surprise to Western taste buds trained on sweeter tea drinks.

Gjuma

This is one for the Adventurous Eaters. Gjuma is black, ropy-looking stuff that’s definitely an acquired taste. It’s Tibetan blood sausage, made from sheep’s blood and cased in the sheep’s innards. Like chitlins, it’s extremely rich.

INDIAN SPECIALTIES
Indian cuisine tends to be a bonanza for vegetarians. Dhaba food is mostly vegetarian, with some meat variations, and of course rice or some sort of bread to accompany things.

July 30th, 2006 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments

Food, Glorious Food (Part I)

Yet another milestone in the long-term Asian travel experience is homesickness. They say that after a certain point in one’s travels a particular kind of culture shock sets in, and the only cure is a short expensive stay in a “Western” style hotel with all the amenities, including Western style food. Jeff Greenwald, in his travel books, relates the apocryphal tale of a woman traveler who would phone a local restaurant that actually made pizza but didn’t deliver, order food for delivery, and abuse whatever poor sod was on the other end of the phone for not delivering. The point was not that pizza wasn’t available, but that it needed to be DELIVERED, piping hot, to be a real pizza.

This morning in the Hotel Room de MommyWizards, the topic of foods we miss came up. I realized that I had a mild case of culinary homesickness already, spurred by some foods that were favorites, and others that I craved simply because I can’t have them. They are not available anywhere near this tiny hill town in Northern India, unless Superman (or maybe Krrish?) makes house deliveries.

So here are the foods I miss. Your list may be very different from mine, and that’s okay. For all I know, somebody in the next hill town over is fighting off cravings for haggis, or poutine, or lutefisk.

SUSHI. Even more than pasta, even more than chocolate, I miss the clean tender texture of fresh salmon or tuna. Hell, I’d even settle for a little lox or gravlax, at this point. In the Himalayan foothills the prospect of eating raw fish seems like a fantasy. I actually had a wet dream about being in a place supplied with all of the sushi I could eat. This dream was shortly followed by a nightmare in which I was trapped in a restaurant that promised me sushi, but only had expensive bar drinks available. Go figure. I miss the crispy nori, pickled daikon, tender flying fish roe, the simple, salty taste of sushi cuisine….which reminds me:

SOY SAUCE. The real stuff. From Japan. And stored properly. Refrigeration space is at such a premium for most restaurants that things that don’t absolutely require refrigeration don’t get it. In India this means that soy sauce containers sit on shelves and tables until much of the water evaporates. What’s left is a thick goopy sludge with a concentrated flavor. If the original sauce didn’t come from Japan, the evaporated concentrate bears only a passing resemblance to any salt-and-soy combination I know of.

PIG FAT. In Mexico, at least, the ubiquitous chicharrones were always available. Here, nobody eats pig in any form, except for folks in the big cities, and Goa. This craving is the result of being raised on pure, sho-nuf’ Southern Black cooking–no matter how much traveling I do, no matter how many sophisticated sushi meals I may swallow down, every so often I need those infusions of eggs-cooked-with-bacon, greens-cooked-with fatback, and so on. It’s a pork thang, you wouldn’t understand….

“CHURCH LADY”-STYLE SOUL FOOD. Y’all who went to those church brunches know what I”m talkin’ about. Those groaning steam tables filled with macaroni-and-cheese (made with the cheap government cheese that no gourmet chef can possibly reproduce), “dirty” rice, red beans, greens, okra, pork chops, fried chicken. Okra is in season here–which means every produce vendor in town has bushels of the stuff right now–and there are folks in Rewalsar who can cook it without turning it into a slimy mess. With other discoveries we weren’t so lucky. Poor Joy found “fried chicken” on the menu here in Rewalsar. What finally arrived was a small plate of chicken bits fried up in pakora batter in a way the Colonel would never have recognized.

DENNY’S BREAKFAST. Some folks get cravings for Taco Bell, totally cognizant of the fact that they’re not craving Mexican food. This is something similar. It’s not fine healthy American cuisine–it’s DINER food, a totally different thing. In the States, whenever I feel uprooted from overtraveling or overworking, I usually stop into a place like Denny’s (or the local greasy spoon equivalent) for breakfast. The point is that if you stop into Denny’s for breakfast, you know exactly what you will get when you order. It’s a certain combination of proteins, carbohydrates, grease and salt that you are guaranteed to get, whether you’re in Vancouver, Canada, or Paris, Texas. Crispy hash browns, cooked up with lard and salt; runny eggs over easy (and look! no prospect of salmonella!), lumpy sausages with just the right amounts of pork meat, gristle, and fat…

COLD, CRUNCHY SALADS Spinach and bacon salad, lettuce wedges slathered with creamy bleu cheese dressing, simple spontaneous creations based on whatever’s handy in the refrigerator–aha. In the remoter parts of India, the salad concept suffers from a few drawbacks:

1. Eating raw produce is a calculated risk done after giving stuff a thorough washing and peeling. After that much work, you might as well cook it.
2. Produce is always subject to geography and meteorology. Corn, in April? Tomatoes in November? Fresh mushrooms in June? Nope, if it’s outta season, it’s outta stock.
3. Produce never gets refrigerated here–you’re supposed to buy what you need for today and maybe tomorrow.
4. Salad dressing? What’s that? And it’s supposed to take up refrigerator space?

As VIPs (about which Joy has more to say in her blog) we rate an actual refrigerator in our room. So Lena has concocted a cold salad of cucumber, tomatoes, onions, a bit of raw garlic, chunks of canned cheese, salt, oil, and vinegar that does well to stave off the cold-crunchy cravings. Even in restaurants a salad is usually a plateful of cucumber, onions and tomato. The closest thing we ever saw to salad dressing was a jar of mayonnaise Lena spotted, that looked like “preserved cheese floating in seasoned oil”…not an encouraging sight.

BEEF. Cows are revered beings who are allowed to wander where they will, and eat all the garbage they wish. They supply plenty ‘o’ dairy product, in the form of milk, butter, yogurt, and paneer, but are not cultivated for eating purposes. Admittedly after watching a few bovines nose rotten produce out of the gutters, the prospect of vegetarianism starts to look a litle more sensible. But the omnivore in me still hankers for the occasional slab ‘o’ steak, medium rare, with enough blood still in it to indicate the cow probably stopped mooing within the last 5 minutes. Egad, just remembering the steak with blue cheese butter at Sauls delicatessen is enough to get the saliva flowing.

“CHEESES.” YES, PLURAL. As in having a wide variety available. It’s so easy for Bay Area residents to get spoiled about this kind of thing. A good friend of ours works in the cheese department at Rainbow grocery; of a slow Tuesday afternoon I would stop in, and she would treat me to a few tastings of different cheeses that were on sale. Goat cheese from France, stinky and flavorful; little-known creations from Spain; “boutique” cheeses from small farms in the California wine country. Here, well…Swiss? Gouda? Gruyere? Fuggedaboutit. In Rewalsar yer basic cheese choices are four: Paneer–glistening white Indian fresh cheese; Amul canned cheese–the local equivalent to Velveeta, except it’s white; Amul cheese spread–the local equivalent to Cheese Whiz, except it’s white; and chura–a stone-like Tibetan cheese that’s the equivalent of Parmesan. (Go on, guess what color it is.) Tibetan chura is deliberately dried to an adamantine consistency in a bead form so it can be strung on necklaces and carried about; it’s the nomad way. The weather here isn’t conducive to keeping dairy products about in any kind of moist form without refrigeration. Paneer is super-fresh stuff that should be eaten right away; chura, on the other hand, has been known to last for centuries (a 200-year-old specimen went up for auction at Sotheby’s a few years back).

One item I brought to the wives on my trip over was a pound of cheddar cheese powder from King Arthur–when the comfort food cravings get too bad, we make noodles with cheese, and think good thoughts about the kitchens of the West.

July 26th, 2006 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments

Mad Dogs and….

“Mad dogs and Englishman go out in the noonday sun…”

As a youngster studying English literature I was exposed to the saying about “Mad dogs and Englishmen” early and often. And there was always a kind of conceptual understanding about the kind of “noonday sun” that could drive all but the crazy indoors.

In India my understanding got promptly converted from the conceptual to the visceral. Chalk it up to global warming if you will, but the noonday sun here has a certain relentlessness to it that I have never encountered in the deserts of the SouthWest. The brightness of the light and the intensity of the heat seem almost intent on driving the unwary into a kind of feverish stupor, and then into heat stroke. Suddenly the concept that “ya gotta be crazy to be out there” seems blindingly obvious.

In Rewalsar most sentient beings get out of the sun around lunchtime. People huddle in the fan-cooled darkness of a local tea shop or dhaba; construction workers rest in the shade of their building projects; dogs nestle into the cool piles of gravel and cement that all construction projects generate; and cows pause in their perambulations to plant themselves in the shade of a building or a tree. The few folks on the streets walk somewhat quickly, clearly focused on getting to their indoor destinations sooner rather than later.

After the first couple of misplanned shopping expeditions or such that involve walking around town at midday, the survival instincts kick in. Future trips get scheduled with the sun in mind. Start early, end things before noon, disappear into some eatery or other to have lunch and wait out the worst.

July 21st, 2006 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments

Power to the People

During the prep phase of any trip to India, the Western traveler is given any number of caveats about how different things are in India. For example:

“Be prepared to forgo Western sanitation standards.”
“Go ready to bargain–few things have fixed prices.”
“Learn to eat with your right hand.”
“Make sure there’s air-conditioning!”

The main thing to understand is that certain goods and services we take for granted in the West either simply aren’t available, or can only be acquired with some difficulty. Despite the number of warnings I received from well-meaning friends, I still got a few surprises, and in the interest of supporting “my people”–namely, you oddball rocket scientist sorceror-Geeks out there–I started writing today’s blog entry. These warnings apply especially if you are doing the low-budget, Lonely Planet/Rough Guide style travel. You folks who must stay at the Hilton, need menus typed in English at every restaurant meal, and require air-conditioned vehicles, can safely skip this blog entry, and go on to something more entertaining, like Boing Boing or Go Fug Yourself.

Right. The rest of you who are still reading, time to take notes.

Pretend you will be part of a Star Trek shuttle crew stranded on a strange planet by the usual Unidentified Anomaly. Now pack accordingly.

What this means is that you should commit part of your luggage space to those generic tools that will give you the maximum ability to repair things and people on the road. Some items we have found useful are:

• Leatherman Tool
• WD-40
• Duct Tape
• Single-use Krazy Glue
• Eyeglass repair kit
• Computer screwdriver kit and screws
• Emergen-C powder
• Vitamins
• High-velocity antibiotics
• Benadryl (tablets and cream)
• Toilet paper

Who you gonna call? What you mean, “you dunno”?

If you are committed to dragging along any tech at all, be it laptop, tablet, PDA, etc., take the time to Google out local tech support info. (Yep, “Google” is a verb. Deal with it, m’kay?) We discovered the hard way that support for IBM Thinkpads stops at Delhi. If you happen to be in the middle of a revolution in Nepal, one country over, well…”SOL you are,” as Yoda would say.

Electricity is just another service, not a right.

This, I think, was the hardest for me to adjust to. It was my good luck–or bad luck, depending on how you look at it–to be working as a contractor at PGE during the strange era of rolling black-outs in California in 2001. People’s indignation at the idea that they might be without electricity, even a scheduled outage lasting only a couple of hours, was practically palpable. “Do without electricity?” they raged. “Impossible! Everything comes to a halt!” These assumptions are absent in India, where outages both scheduled and random can happen daily. Instead, television stations carry frequent reminders to turn stuff off when not in use to save energy, hotel rooms are equipped with a master switch to turn off all electricity to the room when not occupied, Internet cafes have battery back-ups, and even trendy women’s magazines carry full page ads for voltage regulators and uninterruptible power supplies. When the power does go out, things do not come to a halt. They continue, but just a little more slowly and quietly. Vendors continue selling, since a drawer with rupees in it doesn’t really require electricity to function. Auto-rickshaws continue to ply the roads; dhabas and restaurants continue cooking, since they use propane tanks…the main things to disappear entirely are air conditioning and Internet service.

Given all this, take outages and not just the 240 voltage outlets into account when packing your tech. Be sure to include:

• Flashlights–bring several, including one hand-pump flashlight
• Candles
• Chargers
• Extra-time lithium-ion batteries
• Rechargable batteries
• Power converters
• Adaptor plugs
• Solar Panels
• Plan B technology in case your Plan A technology is unusable/unavailable. For example, can your PDA handle your email? If you don’t have landline Internet, can you use your cell phone as a modem?

Broadband is a service, not a property.

It may be just a function of my wayward itinerary, but so far in my Eastern travels I’ve not encountered anyone who has a broadband connection just for themselves. As in other places, satellite connections are available, but at a ruinously expensive rate. Broadband Internet connections tend to get bought and then repackaged as a service offered by an Internet cafe at an hourly rate. A corollary to this is that many things in India labelled “Internet” are often working off something related to dialup, and won’t work as fast as expected. A second corollary is that many things are labelled “Internet” or “broadband” for sales purposes, and may not work at all as expected. It’s common to see TV cable boxes packaged as “broad band” boxes.

In Rewalsar, as I write this, DSL style broadband is not really available. There’s not even a DSL node to connect to yet, for another few months. I’ve tended to change my surfing habits to fit my budget and the services available. Fastest email access we’ve found is via Gmail, so email forwarding to a GMail account is a good strategy for getting the most out of your 30-rupee hour in an Internet cafe. Worth1000.com, anyone? Nope, didn’t think so. Try popurls.com instead…

They’re not “spare” parts. They’re “sparse” parts.

After a little time in India, I began to realize how spoiled I’d been as a First World IT Geek. Need another CD drive? Get one off one of the spare computers. Need a second hard drive? Ditto. After a little time here, I began to realize that “spare” computer bits are few and far between–for the simple reason that if something still works, it’s still in daily use. Do not, even if you’re in the big city world of Mumbai or Delhi, depend on local stores for spare bits–if it’s likely you’ll need an extra one, pack it and take it with you. It’s a “First World” conceit to decide that something no longer works according to a random manufacturer’s decision. Microsoft’s pronouncement that they are no longer supporting Windows 98 is meaningless here. I have spent time in Internet cafes populated by machines running Windows 95 and Windows NT.

“MacGyver” is not fiction. He’s your role model for tech survival.

Once upon a time in Oakland I was having problems with a DSL modem. I called tech support and got the usual Bombay boiler room-style call center. After some wrangling, the tech suggested wrapping the modem in aluminum foil. I know, I know. It sounded stupid. It looked ridiculous.

It worked.

Ever since then I’ve come to realize the India is one of those places where it’s a cultural style to keep things working as long as possible, using whatever tools you have on hand. If the tools in question are aluminum foil, scotch tape, and a paper clip, that’s what you use. The same women’s fashion mag I quoted earlier also gives “home recipes” for cosmetics–get your own damn rose petals and milk, girly, cuz there ain’t no Avon lady.

Editrix’ note: Shortly after I wrote this I made the discovery that, in fact, the Avon lady does make stops in India, selling cosmetics and perfumes designed to suit Indian and Asian tastes. I stand corrected. Mary Kay and her pink cadillacs, thankfully, seem to be nowhere in evidence, although the Amway Army seems to established itself on the sub-continent.

On the plus side this means that any competent techies you encounter in India will also be very skilled at any number of MacGyverisms to make things work. Should you find one, cultivate him closely, and treat him to many cups of tea.

Conclusion

So that’s what I’ve learned so far. Got a techie travel tip I’ve missed? Add it in the comments, and keep on keepin’ on.

July 9th, 2006 Posted by admin | Tech, Travel, India | no comments

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Tenzin Gyatso!

July 6th, 2006 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments

Oh. My. Gods. Y’all.

India is a place where there are many different religions and gods to choose from. Travel along a mountain road, a village street, a city alleyway, and there will be a small gate or house-like structure where some deity is assumed to have taken up residence. Similarly, Indian TV offers the entire spectrum of religious belief, mostly in the form of televised services for Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists, broadcast live morning and evening.

[Editrix’s note: yep, another blog entry that seemingly has nothing to do with the adventures of the MommyWizards. About the time of the last blog entry, I realized that Joy was actually doing a much better job of describing our day-to-day life in Tso Pema than I could, and it would only be a duplication of effort to do it again. So, in a mode similar to my blog entries about San Miguel, Mexico, this blog will tend to cover more general observations about life in India, while Joy’s will cover stuff actually happening to us. For those of you following along on the medical front, shortly after all of us got our digestive tracts a bit more in order, and got ourselves properly rehydrated, a nasty cold that loads up the lungs with goopy stuff started making the rounds. Okay, enough of that. Back to the blog entry, in progress….]

Stateside, most religious TV consists of this Christian Bible thumper or that delivering their take on What God Thinks About All This. Not so with Indian TV, where religious services are just as likely to consist of chanting, dancing, and artwork presentation as well as the usual sermon-plus-a-song. After a while the Christian stuff begins to look a little boring.

And then there’s this one show called Shree Ganesh. Watch a couple episodes of that, and the Christian stuff begins to look really boring.

I can’t imagine a more efficient way to marry job security and religious observance than creating a television show around the Bhagavad Gita. The “Gita” consists of thousands of stories about the doings of Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Kali, Parvati, Hanuman, and many other deities. To retell it as a one-hour TV show basically means not having to make any trips to the Unemployment Office for oh, about a few hundred years. What’s more, Shree Ganesh is not just a simple retelling of the Bhagavad Gita, but a dramatic recreation of the better-known stories, complete with the “Bollywood ishtyle” pauses for song and dance routines or cinematic fight scenes.

I just think of it as the “soap opera of the gods.” In “Shree Ganesh”, the gods are just like you and me, except for, of course, the crazy mad skillz and serious bling. Every episode Shree Ganesh himself puts in an appearance to straighten everybody out and hand out the very occasional pimp slap to the current main bad guy.

Until I started watching Shree Ganesh, it never occurred to me that a religious show would ever need a choreographer and a fight director, but I now believe that these things are absolute necessities, in the same way that maybe a COGIC church congregation absolutely requires a good piano player and a choral lead who can carry a tune. And it’s not like the same thing couldn’t be accomplished with the Bible. The Old Testament, especially, is chock full of stories of peace, loyalty, betayal, belief, greed, jealousy, war, romance, miracles…

Why not a “Mr. God” TV show? A little fight choreography by Yuen Wo-Ping, a bit of song and dance from Andrew Lloyd Weber, maybe some direction from George Lucas, and we’re basically there….

July 5th, 2006 Posted by admin | Travel, India | no comments