Welcome the the first blog in our series of blogs from our exotic adventures in northern India. To be specific we have been in the Punjab region of India.
We have been here for 12 days in total and thought that before we started publishing all of our adventures in chronological order (9 Parts) we would give you all a summary of what the country is all about and it might help you get some context for the rest of our blogs.
The main reason why came to India was to be a part of/ witness a traditional Punjabi Sikh wedding. I was lucky enough to met my friend (the bride-to-be) in Canada about 3-4 years ago and when she invited me to the wedding I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity.
So lets get straight into it!
FOOD
Above: Street cart with food! Breads and sweets, these were a common sight in both Delhi and up in Punjab area.
I think this is a topic that Kyran is better versed to elaborate on, but I will give you a quick introduction first.
When we first decided to come to India I was worried that the food would be too spicy and that I would spend 10 days slowly starving to death or burning a flaming trail through my digestive tract. But much to my delight there is a variation in food between Northern India and Southern India. Northern India is a lot less spice-happy then the fiery South.
But that is as far as I will take you with the food, I will let Kyran take it from here.
Hi yea Kyran here. The food is something that I was really excited about where I was told we were going to India. I love Indian food and if I could eat it all day every day I would be a very happy boy!
I don't mind spicy things but poor Mercedes on the other hand was worried that she would not be able to handle the spice. So our first meal in India was a bit hit and miss because we were not sure what we were in for. Just to be on the safe side, we made sure to specify 'not too much spice' when we ordered.
The Indians had lots of fresh fruit and veggies, seasonal ones for the most part. In the small towns, as we drove past there was always big fruit and veggie stalls full of tasty looking produce for the locals to buy. We never directly bought any so we can't comment on the prices but it's probably nice and cheap.
Below is an assortment of pictures with details and then we'll talk about the vegetarianism vs non-vegetarians in Indian culture, and some general commentary on the foods and ingredients we came across during our stay.
Vegetarian vs. non-Vegetarian
India has a significant population who follow a vegetarian diet, mostly for religious reasons. The vegetarians eat vegetables, dairy, and eggs (although eggs seem rare). Therefore it was very easy to find vegetarian foods to eat, but being vegan was almost impossible as there was cream, butter, "ghee", or milk in basically every dish imaginable. There were often vegetarian-only food stalls and little eateries on the sides of the roads called "Dhaba".
In India, vegetarians are typically also abstaining from alcohol, for the same religious and cultural reasons. So if someone drinks alcohol, they typically also eat meat. There was an interesting situation where we were telling them we are vegetarian, but the second we had alcohol they were like "oh would you like some chicken now too?" and couldn't understand that we are vegetarian BUT also like some alcohol sometimes haha.
When someone does eat meat in India, it's usually fried or crumbed chicken and fish. They also eat 'Mutton', which in India not only refers to sheep meat but also goat meat (unlike in Aus/NZ/Canada/UK where the term "mutton" is specifically for sheep only).
No eating of beef or buffalo is allowed, due to Indian law protecting them as sacred animals. Even if a cow dies on the side of the road, the corpses are taken away and used for leather and other products, but the flesh is never eaten. Interesting huh!?
Let me (Mercedes) add another very important thing here:
In my life as a white female I have usually been able to hold my own to men and have been able to live mostly unaffected by any racist/sexist/other discrimination of any kind. But I learned that in India only men are allowed to drink alcohol and eat meat. Not to a level that is like "oh it is preferable you didn't partake", rather these things were not offered AT ALL to any female.
At parties and events men were segregated from the women and children, where they are served alcohol and buckets of chicken while the women are left to talk about the weather in another room un-catered for! This makes my blood boil but I will leave it here for now. I will however be bringing it up again in a later blog where I will elaborate further as it caused some minor friction at the reception party!
Main Foods Eaten
In the northern Punjab region we encountered almost no rice, most curries were watery 'dal' style foods, and almost always eaten with thin Roti/Chapatti breads rather than rice. Rice seems to be a fancy food for these guys. The food was usually sweet, or very lightly spiced, rather than the super-spicy we were expecting. There was also plenty of sweets with the tea and between meals!
The main vegetables eaten were cauliflower ("Gobi"), potato ("Aloo"), green capsicum (peppers, not sure on punjabi word), carrots and cabbage. Maybe it's not the season for it right now, but they also have a lot of mustard and spinach ("Saag" and "Palak") based curries.
As mentioned most of the curries we had were rather watery, not many were 'dry' style. There was an interesting Indo-Chinese food called "Manchurian" we had at various events for the wedding. The vegetarian version of "Manchurian" is battered cauliflower cooked in a sweet and sticky brown sauce, and has a unique flavour to it. Apparently Indians really like it, and despite being super popular in India it doesn't really exist in China.
Above: chapatti being cooked on a big hot plateBelow: Video showing the Chapatti flipping, pressing, cooking in general!
Above: Prepared ingredients for a big cook-up for the wedding parties
Above: A big plate of chillies, ready to be processed and turned into some tasty curries!
Above: Leftover food from the party cooking, the family got to keep the un-used ingredients and went on to give away or re-sell them the day after.
DRIVING
I did not see any traffic enforcement at all in our time in India.
They drive on the left side of the road like Australia and Britain do.
The general rule in India is "there are no rules"! Traffic is chaos, with people, cars, rickshaws, cows, dogs and motorbikes contending for space on the road.
I think that seat belts only needed to be worn by the front passengers/drivers. That seems to be the only thing enforced by the Indian police or worried about by the locals.
It's perfectly normal to see people driving up highways in the wrong direction (in order to turn off somewhere further back, or ultimately slip across to the other side of the highway with a gap in the middlestrip).
Here's a video I took to demonstrate the crazy situation, unfathomable to us westerners:
There were road police, but they mostly just stand around. There was even 5-7 people piled up on a single motorcycle! The most common motorcycle we saw was a "Hero Honda" with only 100-150cc sized motors.
Auto-rickshaws holding upwards of 7-8 passengers plus the driver were common. Backs of cargo trucks (lorries), were often seen with the backs open and full of people.
Fun note about "Hero Honda" brand - Hero group in India and Honda motors made a joint venture in 1980's to bring the Honda motorcycles into India, and they are very very popular! Since then it's just Hero now. The most popular motorcycle models from Hero we saw was the "Splendour" and "Splendor+" (100cc).
POLLUTION
This is a topic that is deeply ingrained in the culture and politics of the area.
India had a massive rubbish problem. So much so that when you see how bad it is, you start to wonder if your recycling and composting back home is even making a difference - as these guys seem to be counteracting any good that you think we are making.
The streets are covered in rubbish! Plastic everything is just thrown on the ground.
I believe this problem to be two fold:
1. There were no rubbish bins that I saw anywhere. I don't even think there is a waste disposal system in place. The house that we had been staying at seemed to accumulate their rubbish and burn it. But any time that we were out and we had rubbish and I ask what to do with it, I was told to just throw it on the ground.
2. Plastic is a massive social/cultural thing, on the level where plastic is cheap to produce, durable and lightweight. It is then interesting to learn the Indian Government seems to have outlawed the use of the cheap single-use plastic bags in almost all states (read about it on Huffington Post here ) but still all their candy for example still comes individually wrapped in plastic wrapping. Plastic packaging is the bane of modern society for sure, and has large impacts on up-and-coming countries with not many public bins and poor rubbish collection/recycling infrastructure.
As India is a very colourful country other common plastic uses are, plastic flowers, glitter, party decorations sellotape/tape in general - I am sure that I can make this a very exhaustive list but you get my point. I feel that the rest of the world is aware of the issues with the above mentioned products. For plastic in general I feel that we are all having to have a look at how much we do actually need to use plastic, while India is over there either happily oblivious or lacking the education/motivation for alternative product packaging and recycling methods.
ANIMALS
There are two animals that spring straight to mind from my time in India, cows and dogs!
Above: Street cows and dogs, donkeys, buffalo.. the list goes on. On the busy streets of Delhi
For those for you who do not know cows are considered sacred animals in India and thus they do not kill them. They do however use them for milk.
The issue here is that if you have a cow and it stops producing milk they just turn the cow out to the street as it is of no use to them and would be expensive to keep for no reason. The same goes for the bulls, as they do not produce milk they are of little use (with the exception of the working bulls that pull carts etc.) so they are also turned out of home.
So now they have random cows roaming around cities and or farms. The city cows are so comfortable around humans and cars that they just lay down in the roads an relax for the day. The country farm cows try to eat the crops of the farmers so you will see farm hands chasing the cows from their farm to the neighbour's farm - and then that farm's worker will come and keep chasing them further on to protect the crops.
Above: Street cows walking along nonchalantly
Dogs - well from what I can tell they are native. Or at least some of them. You can see that other breads have been introduced and cross-bred. The street dogs kind of reminded me of Australian Dingos.
The dynamic between dogs and humans is a new one for me. The dogs, like the street cows, just chill out in the middle of wherever they want - the road, the rubbish piles, the sand piles. Anywhere! But people seem to leave them to their thing and they leave people alone too. It is a relationship not unlike that between humans and pigeons.
Above x 3: Street dogs at rest stops on the way to Agra and around the Hotel in Delhi. Puppies playing in the detritus and rubble.
THE OVERALL EXPERIENCE
Mercedes
For me India started off as a culture shock from all the guns and security everywhere. It made me think 'what is wrong with this place if there is so much security?' but after a good sleep and time to absorb it all I was OK. After that India stole my heart, the culture, the people, the family that seemed to adopt us from the very beginning. By the end of our trip I can say that it has been an emotional roller coaster and that I am once again suffering from culture shock.
Writing this blog has been a tricky thing to do for me. On the one hand I came to India for my friend to be there for her special day her family has done nothing but love and care for us and we have felt welcomed and loved. But on the other hand there are things about India that I feel need to be said so this blog series has been tricky walking the line between hurting people's feelings and exposing the truths that I feel need to be said.
Kyran
For me India was a magical place, with wonderful food, people, and animals. The culture was very inclusive and supportive, and really helps you understand how they are able to deal with overpopulation in some areas because they are all so nice and helpful to their neighbours and they work together on a problem within the community rather than say "oh that's your problem, deal with it". The food of course is my favourite, there is no better source of tasty vegetarian food in the world than Indian food (in my opinion).
The landscape and farming was interesting to see - the little thatch huts and cow-poo discs everywhere was interesting, how people live like medieval peasants right next door to a modern street of shops and brick houses.
The chaotic driving had me a bit stressed out, and I certainly wouldn't feel safe driving in India myself - the unwritten rules and being able to judge the intent of other drivers around you is very unusual to me.
I highly recommend that everyone should go visit India and see what it's like out in the villages, meet the kind-hearted people, and absorb the culture to see its beauty!
That's it from me!
The next blog will be of our trip to the Taj Mahal so stay tuned for that.
Until next time thanks for reading!
We have been here for 12 days in total and thought that before we started publishing all of our adventures in chronological order (9 Parts) we would give you all a summary of what the country is all about and it might help you get some context for the rest of our blogs.
The main reason why came to India was to be a part of/ witness a traditional Punjabi Sikh wedding. I was lucky enough to met my friend (the bride-to-be) in Canada about 3-4 years ago and when she invited me to the wedding I knew I couldn't miss the opportunity.
So lets get straight into it!
FOOD
Above: Street cart with food! Breads and sweets, these were a common sight in both Delhi and up in Punjab area.I think this is a topic that Kyran is better versed to elaborate on, but I will give you a quick introduction first.
When we first decided to come to India I was worried that the food would be too spicy and that I would spend 10 days slowly starving to death or burning a flaming trail through my digestive tract. But much to my delight there is a variation in food between Northern India and Southern India. Northern India is a lot less spice-happy then the fiery South.
But that is as far as I will take you with the food, I will let Kyran take it from here.
Hi yea Kyran here. The food is something that I was really excited about where I was told we were going to India. I love Indian food and if I could eat it all day every day I would be a very happy boy!
I don't mind spicy things but poor Mercedes on the other hand was worried that she would not be able to handle the spice. So our first meal in India was a bit hit and miss because we were not sure what we were in for. Just to be on the safe side, we made sure to specify 'not too much spice' when we ordered.
The Indians had lots of fresh fruit and veggies, seasonal ones for the most part. In the small towns, as we drove past there was always big fruit and veggie stalls full of tasty looking produce for the locals to buy. We never directly bought any so we can't comment on the prices but it's probably nice and cheap.
Below is an assortment of pictures with details and then we'll talk about the vegetarianism vs non-vegetarians in Indian culture, and some general commentary on the foods and ingredients we came across during our stay.
Above: Red Carrots! Fresh fruit and veggies were sold in large amounts at the local farmer markets and street stalls.
Above: Making sweets for the wedding! (they bring in cooks especially for the occasion)
Above: Typical sweets to have with Indian tea (also sweet). The slabs of creamy coloured stuff at the front is like a semi-solid mass of condensed milk and sugar, it's called Barfi.
Above: Here is a photo of the cooking set up in the house that we were staying at. It was different to see the food be prepared off the floor and not at a bench.
Above: You can see there process of making, rolling and cooking, to make Chapatti/Roti flat breads. The method of eating is using a spoon to put the curry onto the bread, or to use the bread in small pieces formed like little scoops to grab the food or fill the scoop if its a dal-style curry, and eat it that way. The bread also acts as a starchy food to help fill the belly like rice would.
India has a significant population who follow a vegetarian diet, mostly for religious reasons. The vegetarians eat vegetables, dairy, and eggs (although eggs seem rare). Therefore it was very easy to find vegetarian foods to eat, but being vegan was almost impossible as there was cream, butter, "ghee", or milk in basically every dish imaginable. There were often vegetarian-only food stalls and little eateries on the sides of the roads called "Dhaba".
In India, vegetarians are typically also abstaining from alcohol, for the same religious and cultural reasons. So if someone drinks alcohol, they typically also eat meat. There was an interesting situation where we were telling them we are vegetarian, but the second we had alcohol they were like "oh would you like some chicken now too?" and couldn't understand that we are vegetarian BUT also like some alcohol sometimes haha.
When someone does eat meat in India, it's usually fried or crumbed chicken and fish. They also eat 'Mutton', which in India not only refers to sheep meat but also goat meat (unlike in Aus/NZ/Canada/UK where the term "mutton" is specifically for sheep only).
No eating of beef or buffalo is allowed, due to Indian law protecting them as sacred animals. Even if a cow dies on the side of the road, the corpses are taken away and used for leather and other products, but the flesh is never eaten. Interesting huh!?
Let me (Mercedes) add another very important thing here:
In my life as a white female I have usually been able to hold my own to men and have been able to live mostly unaffected by any racist/sexist/other discrimination of any kind. But I learned that in India only men are allowed to drink alcohol and eat meat. Not to a level that is like "oh it is preferable you didn't partake", rather these things were not offered AT ALL to any female.
At parties and events men were segregated from the women and children, where they are served alcohol and buckets of chicken while the women are left to talk about the weather in another room un-catered for! This makes my blood boil but I will leave it here for now. I will however be bringing it up again in a later blog where I will elaborate further as it caused some minor friction at the reception party!
Main Foods Eaten
In the northern Punjab region we encountered almost no rice, most curries were watery 'dal' style foods, and almost always eaten with thin Roti/Chapatti breads rather than rice. Rice seems to be a fancy food for these guys. The food was usually sweet, or very lightly spiced, rather than the super-spicy we were expecting. There was also plenty of sweets with the tea and between meals!
The main vegetables eaten were cauliflower ("Gobi"), potato ("Aloo"), green capsicum (peppers, not sure on punjabi word), carrots and cabbage. Maybe it's not the season for it right now, but they also have a lot of mustard and spinach ("Saag" and "Palak") based curries.
As mentioned most of the curries we had were rather watery, not many were 'dry' style. There was an interesting Indo-Chinese food called "Manchurian" we had at various events for the wedding. The vegetarian version of "Manchurian" is battered cauliflower cooked in a sweet and sticky brown sauce, and has a unique flavour to it. Apparently Indians really like it, and despite being super popular in India it doesn't really exist in China.
All the usual ingredients were used like garlic, red onion (saw almost no white onions being used), and spice powders. Milk, ghee and yogurt were everywhere. Green chillies were used in large amounts, yet the food in North India wasn't particularly spicy.
Radish and cucumber were very common for salads. Capsicums (usually green) were pretty common to add to curries.
Indian tea is almost entirely just hot milk, but some tea leaves tossed in to get a milk 'tea' flavour. Indian coffee is also strangely very weak, and very sweet, they basically boil milk and chuck some weak coffee in and lots of sugar. Sometimes, they go all out and just have hot milk as a drink, usually before bed!
Radish and cucumber were very common for salads. Capsicums (usually green) were pretty common to add to curries.
Indian tea is almost entirely just hot milk, but some tea leaves tossed in to get a milk 'tea' flavour. Indian coffee is also strangely very weak, and very sweet, they basically boil milk and chuck some weak coffee in and lots of sugar. Sometimes, they go all out and just have hot milk as a drink, usually before bed!
DRIVING
I did not see any traffic enforcement at all in our time in India.
They drive on the left side of the road like Australia and Britain do.
The general rule in India is "there are no rules"! Traffic is chaos, with people, cars, rickshaws, cows, dogs and motorbikes contending for space on the road.
I think that seat belts only needed to be worn by the front passengers/drivers. That seems to be the only thing enforced by the Indian police or worried about by the locals.
It's perfectly normal to see people driving up highways in the wrong direction (in order to turn off somewhere further back, or ultimately slip across to the other side of the highway with a gap in the middlestrip).
Here's a video I took to demonstrate the crazy situation, unfathomable to us westerners:
There were road police, but they mostly just stand around. There was even 5-7 people piled up on a single motorcycle! The most common motorcycle we saw was a "Hero Honda" with only 100-150cc sized motors.
Auto-rickshaws holding upwards of 7-8 passengers plus the driver were common. Backs of cargo trucks (lorries), were often seen with the backs open and full of people.
Fun note about "Hero Honda" brand - Hero group in India and Honda motors made a joint venture in 1980's to bring the Honda motorcycles into India, and they are very very popular! Since then it's just Hero now. The most popular motorcycle models from Hero we saw was the "Splendour" and "Splendor+" (100cc).
POLLUTION
This is a topic that is deeply ingrained in the culture and politics of the area.
India had a massive rubbish problem. So much so that when you see how bad it is, you start to wonder if your recycling and composting back home is even making a difference - as these guys seem to be counteracting any good that you think we are making.
The streets are covered in rubbish! Plastic everything is just thrown on the ground.
I believe this problem to be two fold:
1. There were no rubbish bins that I saw anywhere. I don't even think there is a waste disposal system in place. The house that we had been staying at seemed to accumulate their rubbish and burn it. But any time that we were out and we had rubbish and I ask what to do with it, I was told to just throw it on the ground.
2. Plastic is a massive social/cultural thing, on the level where plastic is cheap to produce, durable and lightweight. It is then interesting to learn the Indian Government seems to have outlawed the use of the cheap single-use plastic bags in almost all states (read about it on Huffington Post here ) but still all their candy for example still comes individually wrapped in plastic wrapping. Plastic packaging is the bane of modern society for sure, and has large impacts on up-and-coming countries with not many public bins and poor rubbish collection/recycling infrastructure.
As India is a very colourful country other common plastic uses are, plastic flowers, glitter, party decorations sellotape/tape in general - I am sure that I can make this a very exhaustive list but you get my point. I feel that the rest of the world is aware of the issues with the above mentioned products. For plastic in general I feel that we are all having to have a look at how much we do actually need to use plastic, while India is over there either happily oblivious or lacking the education/motivation for alternative product packaging and recycling methods.
ANIMALS
There are two animals that spring straight to mind from my time in India, cows and dogs!
For those for you who do not know cows are considered sacred animals in India and thus they do not kill them. They do however use them for milk.
The issue here is that if you have a cow and it stops producing milk they just turn the cow out to the street as it is of no use to them and would be expensive to keep for no reason. The same goes for the bulls, as they do not produce milk they are of little use (with the exception of the working bulls that pull carts etc.) so they are also turned out of home.
So now they have random cows roaming around cities and or farms. The city cows are so comfortable around humans and cars that they just lay down in the roads an relax for the day. The country farm cows try to eat the crops of the farmers so you will see farm hands chasing the cows from their farm to the neighbour's farm - and then that farm's worker will come and keep chasing them further on to protect the crops.
Dogs - well from what I can tell they are native. Or at least some of them. You can see that other breads have been introduced and cross-bred. The street dogs kind of reminded me of Australian Dingos.
The dynamic between dogs and humans is a new one for me. The dogs, like the street cows, just chill out in the middle of wherever they want - the road, the rubbish piles, the sand piles. Anywhere! But people seem to leave them to their thing and they leave people alone too. It is a relationship not unlike that between humans and pigeons.
Above x 3: Street dogs at rest stops on the way to Agra and around the Hotel in Delhi. Puppies playing in the detritus and rubble.
THE OVERALL EXPERIENCE
Mercedes
For me India started off as a culture shock from all the guns and security everywhere. It made me think 'what is wrong with this place if there is so much security?' but after a good sleep and time to absorb it all I was OK. After that India stole my heart, the culture, the people, the family that seemed to adopt us from the very beginning. By the end of our trip I can say that it has been an emotional roller coaster and that I am once again suffering from culture shock.
Writing this blog has been a tricky thing to do for me. On the one hand I came to India for my friend to be there for her special day her family has done nothing but love and care for us and we have felt welcomed and loved. But on the other hand there are things about India that I feel need to be said so this blog series has been tricky walking the line between hurting people's feelings and exposing the truths that I feel need to be said.
Kyran
For me India was a magical place, with wonderful food, people, and animals. The culture was very inclusive and supportive, and really helps you understand how they are able to deal with overpopulation in some areas because they are all so nice and helpful to their neighbours and they work together on a problem within the community rather than say "oh that's your problem, deal with it". The food of course is my favourite, there is no better source of tasty vegetarian food in the world than Indian food (in my opinion).
The landscape and farming was interesting to see - the little thatch huts and cow-poo discs everywhere was interesting, how people live like medieval peasants right next door to a modern street of shops and brick houses.
The chaotic driving had me a bit stressed out, and I certainly wouldn't feel safe driving in India myself - the unwritten rules and being able to judge the intent of other drivers around you is very unusual to me.
I highly recommend that everyone should go visit India and see what it's like out in the villages, meet the kind-hearted people, and absorb the culture to see its beauty!
That's it from me!
***
Well that is it for this Introduction blog. I hope that this has been a good general summary for you and that you are ready to dive into this series adventures with us.The next blog will be of our trip to the Taj Mahal so stay tuned for that.
Until next time thanks for reading!
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