land of a thousand flavours

This post got delayed because it needed some editing.

The idea was to write about food, which deserves special attention in any mention of India. I am still exploring the endless possibilities on offer from rooftop restaurant menus. All of it vegetarian; in fact, I haven't had meat in three weeks apart from a Tibetan chicken soup, but please don't tell my mum about it. Of course I miss certain homemade stuff only she knows how to make properly, but all in all I've enjoyed every thali we've had so far, especially one made on open fire out in the desert.

We took a camel safari in Jaisalmer, a beautiful outpost in the Thar desert near the Pakistan border. The camel jockeys turned out to be excellent cooks; even camel farts could not spoil our appetite. Tea was just as superior; it was prepared with fresh milk, which we obtained from some goats grazing in the area. Chasing them down provided a little extra fun and exercise.

Now, any talk about exotic food inevitably includes abdominal response to it. I was about to proudly announce that our intestines have only staged a couple of minor mutinies, with no major impact on our travel, not counting that I subsequently decided to take it easy with hot spices.

But then we succumbed, and it was at this point I needed to rewrite my report. It was probably water; anyhow, at the time of writing, I have just recovered after a day of total purification, while two men are still down and barely travelable.

The health issues got us stranded in Chandigarh, capital of Punjab and Haryana, a weird geometrical grid of concrete blocks and wide avenues. Completely opposite from any other Indian city, it's impossible to miss that the mastermind behind it was le Corbusier, who somehow forgot that summers in this region are ferocious, making his concrete dream uninhabitable without expensive air-conditioning.

The city's restaurants offer by far the largest meals we've had so far, but we are now unable to enjoy them. It also lies just short of the Himalayas, which was to be our next destination, but the indigestion-stricken team is unlikely to survive the windy bus ride to Shimla. I've also just read reports of flooding and landslides in the area, with people dead and missing, so it probably wasn't such a good idea to go there anyway.

So we're taking the next express train to Delhi, our last stop and point of departure from India, finishing our trip the way we started it - by chilling out on the rooftop of another overheated, chaotic urban sprawl of over 10 million people.