Recently I was lucky enough to take two weeks out to visit India. In addition to visiting the usual tourist haunts like the Taj Mahal, I also headed down to the Keralan coast for some R&R, most of which consisted of eating an awful lot of Indian food.
There’s just so much to talk about so I’m just going to give my top ten learnings about the real Indian food:
- Even an avowed carnivore like myself found the vegetarian food to be out of this world good. There is just so much choice in even the smallest restaurants.
- Seafood on the coast is also amazing – check out the picture of the prawns below!
- Whisper it, but on the whole Indian food isn’t that hot, it is just packed full of mouth watering flavour
- Not everything is covered in creamy sauces. I had as much food with little or no sauce as I did with plenty of sauce
- Everything can be spiced, a nice cup of tea with some Tea Masala (cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, star anise, peppercorn, and cloves usually although it differs at each restaurant) is actually surprisingly refreshing, especially when it starts to get a bit chilly in the evening
- Travel for one hour from wherever you are staying and the food will be completely different
- The bread is so much more than just Chapati and Naan, I counted at least four other types, most of which I can’t remember but tasted amazing
- Any food overlaps with the UK are likely to be very different. I had a Samosa in Mumbai that was the size of my hand and had thick, almost pasty like, pastry and was stuffed with spicy potatoes (my mouth is watering just remembering it!)
- The service can be a touch slow but if you’re watching the sun go down with an ice cold Cobra does it really matter?!
- Finally, and most importantly, it’s actually very hard to get a beer and often you’ll get it wrapped in newspaper to avoid the police seeing it….
I hope this has inspired you to go to India – there are some great places to visit and I had an amazing time. If you’re planning on visiting India, Kerala in particular, then leave a comment with any questions and I’ll answer as best I can!
