Dirty pages from Terminal 2

In December 2011, I was graced with the opportunity to travel around India for two weeks with Arun Gandhi and Tushar Gandhi (the grandson and great grandson of the famous loin cloth model respectively); as well as a troupe of American tourists. The trip was organised by Global Exchange, an agency dealing in so called ethical tourism. I don't want to spoil your food with politics, but in Arun's words, these tend to feature:
"Westerners with sunglasses and cameras on poverty safari. Making the sound 'awww' at all the appropriate pit stops."

We traveled from Mumbai all the way north to New Delhi and Dehra Dun (a town forever immortalised in a patronising Beatles number about gurus and lysergic acid diethylamide), visiting farms, slums and ashrams by day and overdosing on Kingfisher beer and curries by night. You may doubt it, fellow take-away lovers, but after a few days of hotel breakfast curry, lunch curry and dinner curry, the thick, spicy sauces with rice can all begin to taste the same. Also, one starts to speculate if dodgy tap water is the true cause of the Delhi belly.

So when we arrived in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, I was relieved at the opportunity to try traditional Gujarati food at Vishala Restaurant. The American college students weren't. Ahmedabad had a KFC.

We took our seats on the floor in the open air under a great straw canopy. American shutters fluttered yet again at the Indian sun, which seemed to always set in blood red. For plates there were round green leaves set out in front of us. After an opening drum performance a parade of staff dressed in novelty turbans and saris filed past us, each placing an individual item of food on our leaves. As it turned out, the food was all Indian to me. We still had papads, lemon pickle, sauces and rice; but there was something to it. Something more earthy and beany. It was pure, rustic, vegetarian food.

The Americans continued to complain about the lack of chicken. Arun said this was parallel to the struggle of his grandfather. He doesn't eat meat. It's not a Hindu thing, it's a cholesterol thing. I spilled a handful of dal on the robes I had bought in Mumbai. That morning as I walked the streets of Ahmedabad, groups of boys on motorcycles passed me laughing and yelled
"Hello, Indian!"
The joke is that I was dressed like an extra from the Temple of Doom, and they wore the real Indian uniform of formal shirts and slacks.

We skipped desert and headed back to the hotel for Cornettos.