Stinky goodness of sun dried cauliflower
Sun dried cauliflower
Not as bad as your stinky tofu or durian but we are splitting hairs. When cooked, it is yummy – obviously. So, lets take this cauliflower journey – from raw to sun-dried to hydrated cauliflowers.
Durga Devi Namo Namah
Enjoy this year’s Durga Puja photos, brought to us by Ankur. Click on any one of them to see the slideshow of entire photo gallery. The slideshow is captioned by stories – mythological and social – of Durga festival.
 The Goddess |
 The Demon |
 The Devotees |
Durga Puja is celebration of warrior Goddess Durga killing the buffalo demon Mahisha who was could not be killed by a man or an animal. Durga worship among Bengalis coincides with north Indian celebration of Dussehra when Rama conquers Ravana. Although this is a ten day celebration, the seventh through ninth days are most glorious when communities get together to worship, eat and set up music, dance and theater performances.
Tokyo: Shibuya’s love hotels
Love hotels of Shibuya
Shibuya is the little cousin of Times Square. A cacophony of lights and crowds. It is hard to tell that abutting Shibuya are the side streets of Love Hotel hill, where the cacophony ceases – no restaurants, no pachinko parlors, no bars, no shops, and no soliciting. Just the pink and green blinking lights offering comfortable ‘Rest’ and ‘Stay’. ‘Rest’ is a euphemism for a couple of hours of romantic encounter and ‘Stay’ indicates the entire night’s rates.
Harajuku Bridge
Harajuku bridge
We were in Tokyo, it was a Sunday, and we had an appointment to keep with Gothlolis on the Harajuku bridge. Yes, even in the rain.
On Sundays Harajuku bridge becomes a promenade with variously dressed cosplayers arrayed along its length. Cosplayers is a combination of costume and roleplay, and essentially means dressing up as your favorite anime/manga/videogame character. But the facile description of cosplay belies the effort they put into both creating their costumes and playing their chosen roles. At least for the time they are on the bridge they seem to inhabit their roles quite thoroughly. When the metaverse finally arrives, they will be its first avatars.
Tokyo Cafés: You are being served
Click for Tokyo cafe slideshow
Contrary to popular assumption Japan is actually a big coffee drinking nation. Tokyo has many local and international cafés but the more interesting are the ones that offer ‘extra’ service.
Biodiversity park in Delhi
Yamuna Biodiversity Park
Any green space in the naturally arid Delhi is always welcome. The Biodiversity park is an artificial wetland created to attract and study migrating birds. It is spread over an area of approximately 450 acres near Wazirabad village in North Delhi.
Park authorities are still learning to cope with visitors and may not necessarily be too helpful. But most scientists love to talk about their work. So if you find one of the field researchers, ask him or her about their work, and enjoy a guided tour.
Kailasa at Stern Grove Festival 2009
Beer and music at Stern Grove
We have recently returned from a short visit to Delhi and are a little home sick. So a couple of weekends ago we decided to go to the Stern Grove Festival for Kailash Kher’s group Kailasa. The thought of soaking in the coolness of Stern Grove listening to Tauba Tauba sounded fantastic after Delhi’s grueling heat and mugginess.
Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market: It’s see-food
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We were in Tokyo and we couldn’t possibly go back home without making a pilgrimage to Asia’s largest fish market. The only hitch was that the recommended visiting hours are 5am-8am. According to legend and Lonely Planet, the famous Tuna auction happens at 4am, which many websites informed us, is now closed to tourists. We were going to give it a shot anyway. Or not. At 4 am.
Six hours layover at Hong Kong airport
Central skyline during a Hong Kong layover, click for more
Here I was again, stuck at yet another airport in the middle of a San Francisco-Delhi trip. My last long layover was a twelve hour one at Bangkok when I had managed to sneak away to the city. I had the urge to get away again – in a decade of hopping between San Francisco and Delhi, I had never had six hour layover at HKG before.
A little effort yielded information about a pre-packaged transit tour. A little more research into visa requirements and transport options, suggested an easy free form tour. Here is what happened.
Heritage walk – Chandni Chowk, Delhi
Here is a recent article on a heritage walk down Chawri Bazaar and Chandni Chowk. The walk focuses on the old havelis – palatial homes of the rich from hundreds of years ago. Contact information of the guide is provided in the article.
Chandni Chowk is steeped in history and chaos. For visitors to Delhi, Chandni Chowk metro station has been the port of easy access to Red Fort and the spice market. Here, once you step out of the cool and modern station, you drown in human activities. From beggars to 200 year old sweet shops to an assortment of temples – Hindu, Jain, Gurudwara and mosque, to modern day internet coffee shops, it is all here. And behind the shops, crowds and the tangles of overhead wires are these havelis. Some look like a collection of loosely arranged bricks – one push and they all come tumbling down….
Coffee and Chocolate – Chokola, New Delhi
Chocolate cake at Choko la
We continue our occasional series about Chocolate and Coffee with a cafe in New Delhi called Chokola.
The place is done up in chocolate-y colors, the menu is the size of a small book with overwrought foodie descriptions of cocoa, single origin chocolates, and truffles, followed by the standard cafe fare of sandwiches, pizzas, etc.
A walk down Delhi’s ancient quarters.
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You are a conscientious visitor to Delhi. You have read your Lonely Planet India, done some web searches, and know that Delhi is an ancient city, the site of seven capitals over millenia. The Red Fort is on your list, as is Humayun’s tomb, and perhaps the Qutab Minar. And then you make your way to the Taj in Agra.
But surely Delhi must have accumulated a few more ruins than what India’s lackadaisical tourism industry would have you believe. Here are just four examples, all of which can be reached on foot from Qutab Minar.
A splatter of paint in Delhi
Sculpture at NGMA
Sculpture at NGMA
In the midst of being stir fried in Delhi heat, I decided to cool off at NGMA – National Gallery of Modern Art. For a museum that is by no means a world class facility, it houses a handful of world’s finest art pieces. So I found out this trip when I chanced upon a special exposition on Nandlal Bose’s artwork.
Late night crepes in Delhi – at Yellow Brick Road
Yellow Brick Road, Hotel Ambassador, Delhi
I am visiting Delhi for two weeks. I shouldn’t be hankering for crepes in the midst of this heat and mangoes and parathas and samosas and the kababs. But I am. So, I am at Yellow Brick Road, a cute little cafe at Hotel Ambassador near Khan Market. It is painted bright and cheerful with a touch of toy-store feel about it. Judging by the clientele, it is popular with all – eastern and western, young and old, men and women.
In search of sun – solar eclipse in Delhi
Partial solar eclipse of 2009 in Delhi
It was the eclipse of the century – the longest full eclipse lasting more than six minutes. During the days preceding the eclipse, media’s handling of it was like watching a schizophrenic – one moment all scientific with graphic visualization of solar and lunar orbits and astrophysics the other moment a discussion on fasting and soul cleansing and astrology.
Kakori kababs at Salim’s – roasting at Khan Market
Salim Kabab at Khan Market
Even in blazing summers, a visit to Delhi is incomplete without a taste of its famous kababs. We had already tried satisfying this craving by eating some sheesh-kababs in the cool comfort of the regal Curzon room in Oberoi Maidens Hotel. Their sheesh was competent, but it had failed to hit the spot.
We were planning a visit to Khan Chacha when we happened to read about Salim’s, yet another tiny kabab corner in Khan market, at “Eating Out in Delhi” blog. It is a rare happenstance to find a foodie proclaim a kabab corner as good as chacha’s, so we were intrigued. On author’s suggestion, we decided to seek out Salim’s kakori kabab and are glad we did.
Holy walk on hot asphalt – from Haridwar to Delhi
Kavadi-bearer near Connaught Place
This is an ultramarathon of a different type. Every year in July, come Monsoons or not, hundreds of thousands of Kavadi (or Kaavadi) bearers walk from Haridwar to their respective Shiva temples. They carry the holy water of Ganges in pitchers mounted on shoulder slung bamboo carriers. A vast majority of them are young men between the ages of 20-30 from small villages or slums.
Restaurant Pindi, beating Delhi heat with food from Pind
Taka-tak aloo at Pindi restaurant
It is Sunday, the day of rest. Rest from the kitchen, that is. I am at Pindi, a popular establishment in Delhi frequented by visitors and locals alike. It is devilishly hot outside. I can smell grilled meat a good hundred feet from Pindi. It is late for lunch but the joint is crowded. People are tearing apart tandoori chicken with gusto and hungrily sopping up creamy curries with naans. All accompanied by cheerful faces, animated conversations, and sounds of laughter. Very Punjabi indeed.
Showing a purple tongue to Delhi heat
Jamuns, a seasonal purple berry
This monsoon season in Delhi, I tasted jamuns after nearly two decades. As a child, picking ripe jamuns used to be a pleasant way of killing time. It often involved sneaking into a neighbor’s yard when the elders were dozing off in the summer heat. It also meant getting up on precarious fences or branches to reach up the tree for a handful of jamuns. I saw some street urchins doing the same the other day; the girl appeared to be as old as I was then.
Baking in Delhi, waiting for the rains
Humidity and heat give mangoes a sweeter flesh and a heady aroma. The same dose makes my brain feel fried and served on a platter – all shapeless and gooey. Monsoons should smell of earth and mangoes but it hasn’t started raining yet. Air is so thick with humidity that I am practically breathing in water. Or is it soup? A soup spiced with exhaust fumes, and body odors.
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Fillmore Street Jazz Festival 2009
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What better way to celebrate July 4th than with the most American of art forms – Jazz. And the Fillmore Street Jazz Festival does the celebration with gusto. This year it was spread across eight or so blocks on Fillmore street, four main performance stages, and many smaller performances going on all along the street and in Jazz clubs lining Fillmore.
Kashmir – On not bus-ing across Leh
Thiksey Monastery
We abandoned our plans to hoof it around Leh, but we were still sample-the-local-culture type of tourists. So no rented SUVs for us, it was going to be local buses instead. We asked our inn-keeper for the night whether it would be possible to catch a bus the next morning to our next village stop. He assured us that there was a bus to be caught at 10:00 am the next morning. Excellent.
We had time to do the morning tea ritual and eat a leisurely, if spartan, breakfast. It felt like a vacation after all. We hefted our backpacks, walked half a mile to the nearest bus stop and patiently sat down to wait. The waiting was pleasant – deep blue sky, fresh mountain air, high desert landscape around us, the golden Buddha statue glinting in the courtyard of the monastery we had visited the evening before. Very picture postcard perfect. Put in some luxury tents and charge a bunch of rich tourists $1000-a-day perfect.
Coffee and chocolate at Fog City News
Fog City News Storefront
Fog City News is fourth in our chocolate and coffee series. The earlier ones are Recchiuti, Tcho and XoX.
- Location: Market Street, Financial District
- Coffee: None! Although you can find imported bottled soda here. And magazines …
- Chocolate: Tasting bites and bars – Dolfin, Vosges, Scharffen Berger to new a few …
FCN is not your atypical chcocolate store. It is an atypical magazine shop. If you like to lay your hands on hard to find magazines and periodicals, this is your place to be. Ditto for chocolates. The store fits in with busy life of financial district. Grab a chocolate and a magazine and be on the run…or, grab a soda and a magazine and be on the run … May even be a nice spot to spend ten minutes browsing during the dull part of the day. And to pick up gifts as well.
Coffee and chocolate at Recchiuti
Rose caramel
Recchiuti is third in our chocolate and coffee series. The earlier ones being Tcho and XoX.
- Location: Ferry Plaza
- Coffee: Peets’ or Blue Bottle is available a few doors down.
- Chocolates: Truffles, caramels, …
Recchiuti’s is what you would expect a fancy chocolate store to look like. All trim, polished and glittery and that is just the staff. No chairs for shoppers to sit around and look flabby, unpolished and drab. No coffee either to ruin any nice perfumes the staff or customers may be wearing. Their price helps to not overindulge.
Are we sounding curmudgeonly?
Coffee and chocolate at Tcho
tcho-a-day
Following up on our coffee and chocolate trail (inspired by David Lebovitz), the second one on our list is Tcho.
- Location: Pier 17, San Francisco
- Coffee: Blue Bottle
- Chocolates: Tasting squares and bars
We had known about Tcho long before we sampled it. They had been getting reviewed on boingboing since their beta days (yes, even chocolates have beta versions in silicon valley).
Our first taste of Tcho’s chocolates was on a walk along Embarcadero. On that occasion, we tasted all four of their varieties and picked up a small pack of 8 tasting squares. On our last visit, we picked up a 30 day package called tcho-a-day.
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Locomotoring 