‘Short trips’ was
this year’s recurring theme, making the best of my sparse holidays and sparser travel
money. If the last two years had been
about discovering the joys of road-trips and solo travel, this year led me
down a new path – food trips. Having always been a foodie, enjoying regional
cuisine whenever I travelled, this year’s trips took this passion to new
heights – trips where we ate like there was no tomorrow, hunting down the
tastiest local specialities a place had to offer. I had more than enough food
to savour, despite my supposed ‘drawback’ of being a vegetarian.
In between gorging
on food, I photographed these delicacies, resulting in outright bad photos at
first, but improving slowly by the next trip. This has made me want to better
my food photography skills, something I’ve resolved to practice next year; not
your glossy, studio set-up food photos, but photographing food on the streets.
I love how travel brings such new challenges my way!
With a trip already
planned for the first month of 2016, I sign off excitedly for this year,
wishing everybody a very happy, healthy and travel-filled 2016.
Madurai
I travelled to
Madurai by chance, as my husband, who spent a few years living there, wanted to
visit the city to re-live his childhood memories. The trip quickly snowballed
into a larger agenda, of also enjoying Madurai’s famed food. The city takes
its title of 'thoonga nagaram' (the town that never sleeps) very
seriously, buzzing from the wee hours of the morning, well into the night.
Catering to the teeming mass of people are hole-in-the-wall eateries and
road-side vendors, with a wide array of meals and tiffin items. While meals
include a lot of non-vegetarian dishes, tiffin is predominantly vegetarian, and
can be a meal in itself. Madurai's residents have a discerning palate,
which reflects in the food they prepare, and it is almost impossible to get bad
food anywhere in the city. I ate my way through Madurai tiffin, which offers a
mind-boggling variety of dishes and beverages: from popular dishes like kotthu
parotta and idli to unique local items like jigarthanda and thennangkuruthu.
Kodaikanal
The best way to
atone for indulging in such excesses at Madurai was to walk it off, I thought.
What better way to do that than to spend a few days at nearby Kodaikanal?
Kodaikanal’s crisp winter weather and laidback weekday disposition proved to be
the perfect setting for rambling walks, energetic cycling around the Kodai Lake,
and a sweaty hike to Dolphin’s Nose. Our determination to not focus on food, however,
was thrown out of the window thanks to our gregarious home-stay hosts, who
broke our resolve with every lip-smacking meal they cooked for us. All the food sent us scrambling for more
walks, and we returned to Bangalore refreshed by Kodaikanal’s charm and natural
beauty.
Read about this trip: http://nomadandabag.blogspot.com/2016/08/seeking-nostalgia-in-kodaikanal.html
Kabini, Karnataka
This quick jaunt to Kabini
in the monsoon was intended as a rejuvenating break after a strenuous first
half of the year, and to celebrate hubby’s milestone birthday. As usual, Kabini
lived up to its promise. Threatening clouds loomed, but it never rained hard
enough to foil our plans. Four safaris into the forest, short walks around
Kabini River Lodge’s campus, and contemplative sessions gazing at the Kabini
reservoir got us fully recharged for the latter half of 2015.
Delhi
Dilli ki sardi was
something my friend would often poetically rave about. I decided that it was finally
time to experience it first-hand, inviting myself over to my aforesaid friend’s
home. Research prior to the trip had armed me with a list of over 40 eateries
to visit, many serving winter specialities, and I lost no time in dragging my
friends along for the food mania. Over three days, we systematically chomped
our way through the list, walking for hours through Old Delhi, seeking out
nondescript push-carts and not-marked-on-any-map eateries, all serving some of
the cheapest, freshest and most delicious food I have ever eaten. When we could
walk no more, we took breaks at some of Delhi’s lovely monuments, catching
forty winks and resting our tired legs, only to resume our mission soon after. Not
for the faint-hearted, this trail!
Posts
