Aambrosia

The Last Two Weeks

have been something like this: overnight bus to Dehra Dun in Uttaranchal Province where there are a lot of white-faced monkeys and smiling monks; five quiet, cool temperature nights at a monastery, cooking simple Tibetan and northern India meals and writing and taking walks; made Tibetan butter tea, a rich, salty concoction; made poori bread while half asleep at 4:15 a.m.; hellish 10-hour bus back to Delhi (my shirt collar turned black from the smog filling the bus); family in town visiting, and we flew up to Leh, Ladakh for a quiet week of trekking and staring at the stunning Himalayas from 10,000 feet and learning about Ladakhi bread, yellow lentil dal, and curried carrots. More soon -- the Internet of India is fickle.

Technical Difficulties in Leh - follow Twitter updates to the right

Enough For a Few Days

Breakfast is...

Breakfast means many different things to different people. There's the banality of bacon and eggs. In China they favor a spicy noodle soup or rice porridge. There's the wonderfulness that I know of oatmeal with fresh and dried fruit, nuts, granola, maple syrup and milk, either whole or soy. As a observant friend once said, "So the oatmeal acts as a base layer." Exactly.

In India, chai is a mainstay, of course, and is served in very small dainty teacups or in six-ounce glasses. It's made in a single pot, with boiled water, black tea leaves, milk, and sugar, and then is strained through a sieve into the teacup or glass. Indians prepare Nescafe Instant Coffee as well as anyone, but I'd stick to the tea. Accompanying your chai, breakfast can be a simple chapati flat bread with a small plate of dal or saucy vegetables.

Indian Pigeons (This is Not a Recipe)

There are pigeons perching outside of my window, up here on the third floor of the Hotel Next Inn on Laxmi Naran Road. There's an old metal support for an air conditioner, which is long gone (who needs an air conditioner when it's 100 degrees and you have a creaky fan blowing hot air?), so the window's boarded up with splintering plywood, which doesn't quite come down far enough to meet the wall. So when I'm lying in bed with a book or notebook, the pigeons are only a few away and can't see me looking at them. They have orange eyes with a coal-black circle in the middle. They are creatures: their three-toed feet -- webbed and red and talloned -- make me think dinosaur. Their feathers are grey but change along their necks -- like a peacock's -- to a metallic green. They know I'm a food writer and thus requested not to be photographed less we think of them as dinner, so you'll have to use your imagination.

It's my third full day in Delhi. This is not a place, in my opinion, to stay for more than a few days, but I'm still here since the road to Uttaranchal Province -- my next destination -- is washed out. (There are cool hill stations there, but it's monsoon season.) Yesterday I started working on a recipe for Aloo Gobi, a classic north Indian dish of curried potato and cauliflower.

"Hello, my friend!"

From my third-floor room, I look down on a quiet street off the Main Bazar. My room has a sliding bolt and padlock, giving it a comforting, prison-cell feel, but the fan is top notch. I wonder if it could possibly be any hotter. The stray dogs sleep in the middle of the street, vehicles swerving around them. Men sleep in the back of their rickshaws waiting to sell their transporting service to an on-foot passerby.

When I pass the touts on the street, they all say the same things:

"I am not a cheater! That man-" he gestures to another rickshaw driver, "he is a cheater!"

"I don't want to sell you anything, my friend. Just chat with you. Practice my English."

"Where you from? America? God bless America!"

They are all men. The women don't speak to foreigners and often avert their eyes and shield their faces when in the presence of men. The men will sell you anything you want or don't want to buy. Ostensibly, they're selling a ride somewhere, but they will also bring you to a shop that sells necklaces and rings, the "BEST" travel agency, or book you a bus or train ticket themselves. They take their phone out to show they mean business. One young man told me that he was engaged to a woman in Wisconsin. He wanted me to buy a flight to Srinagar, Kashmir for $200. To prove that he was not a cheater and didn't want my money, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of credit cards. "Look, I'm a rich man!"

Market in Old Delhi

The Ride into New Delhi

Arriving at the Indira Gandhi airport this afternoon, I took a rickshaw the 21 kilometers into New Delhi. Stopped in traffic -- horns blaring, people shouting -- this taxi of boys dressed in their school uniforms looked over at me, pointing at my camera, smiling. The sun shines, and the air is very hot and humid. Along the highway to the airport, there are small enclaves of people, construction everywhere (including the beginnings of a new metro line), and shacks that are people's homes clumped together along the highway.

The road is packed full of old British cars, so-called "eco-friendly" buses spewing gray exhaust, motorcycles, men on bicycles hauling construction materials, and livestock. Each makes its own very specific and usually loud noise. Parts of the highway are dirt. The black cows are disinterested in the horns and walk very slowly and sometimes they stop altogether. So far, the chai served along New Delhi's Main Bazar is milky and sweet, and pooris come hot off the griddle, puffed up and buttery, with a spicy potato and onion filling.