Old Delhi

Peter, our trusty driver, frowns. We tell him we want to go to Old Delhi, to see Jama Masjid, one of the oldest and biggest mosques in India, and to wander around Chandi Chowk, a bazaar considered to be the heart and soul of the old city. Jama Masjid, he tells us matter-of-factly, is not safe. Nor is Chandi Chowk. There. Are. Pickpockets. Madam! he implores. But we are here to see these sites, we explain to him, we want to see a bit of the color, the chaos we have heard is the ‘real’ India. Ok I will take you to Jama Masjid, he relents. But I do not think it wise to go to Chandi Chowk. I look him hard in the eye. We are going to see Chandi Chowk, I tell him firmly. He gives me a look halfway between worry and consternation. But with little choice, he pulls over to where the main road ends and the windy muddy rickshaw-choked road begins. He can’t drive the car in any farther, but he flags down a rickshaw driver and a lengthy discussion in Hindi between the two ensues, mostly with heated tones coming from Peters’s end. I have no idea what he is telling the rickshaw driver, but I can guess. I believe he scares the living daylights out of the rickshaw driver, who is unusually attentive to our safety and watches us like a hawk as we climb out of the rickshaw and make our way to the mosque. I will wait RIGHT here, he tells us, and wait he does as we climb to the top of the mosque’s minaret for a view of the dusty noisy city below. We come back down and he begins pedaling slowly towards the bazaar. But we only get about one block when we are stopped by a street parade, complete with white horses, and marching band and fireworks. Our driver tells us we must wait about 15-20 minutes for the parade to pass. We sit in the rickshaw watching for a while, then get antsy and tell our rickshaw driver that we will walk from here, and meet him back at the Red Fort. On the rickshaw, without the protection of our air-conditioned car, we are exposed to the elements—dust, honking horns, exhaust, shouting, colors, smells—but we not responsible for our forward movement. Now walking, we are fully immersed, and cognizant of the constant need to negotiate between people, rickshaws, and motorbikes so as not to get squashed, literally. It is overwhelming, but I find it liberating as well, walking through the bazaar, taking it all in, stopping where we fancy.

We nearly bump into two busy food carts, and take the opportunity to try out some street food, which Peter has warned us against. I order a bowl of chaat—fried bread topped with potato, chickpea, yogurt and tamarind sauce—that is crispy, creamy and tart all at once. Drew gets a bowl of dal (lentils) topped with slivered red onions and served with puffy bread cooked on the tawa (griddle), which is equally delicious. We wander our way through stores selling everything from phone chargers to saris, and hear them call out to us. There are lots of little restaurant and food stands and my eyes nearly bug out from trying to decipher what the different dishes contain. There are sweets, breads of all sorts, and more tasty food carts selling dal out of big brass urns. We stop in at a fast-food café of sorts, order a kidney bean curry with puri bread this time, which comes on our plates puffed up like a big balloon, hot air in the middle. Everyone is rushing to and fro, and we seem to be the only tourists in sight. We make our way back to the red fort where our rickshaw driver is patiently waiting, waving frantically as soon as he catches glimpse of us. He pedals us back to Peter, who is waiting with the car in a car park. Peter looks relieved we are safely back, still possibly put out from our desire to explore the less manicured parts of Delhi, to eat things we are not supposed to, to risk a few moments of discomfort in the name of discovery. He waits patiently while Drew and I share a cup of piping hot spiced tea, masala chai, given to us in a little paper cup by another street vendor standing behind a large silver cauldron. Back in the car, I can almost feel him breath a sigh of relief as he shuttles us back to our swanky hotel, far from the madding crowds of Old Delhi.

First Impressions (Delhi, India)

The Delhi airport is new and shiny, no trace of the cracked cement floors, dust and smell of mothballs that I remembered. There are many men waiting for their luggage, fewer women. Outside the air is biting cold and drivers with signs are bundled up. Glancing across shades of brown and varying headdresses (turban, prayer caps, sweatshirt hoodies) to locate our driver, I realize it is a more diverse crowd than I recollected, and a tamer one too. Things feel very orderly, almost quiet in fact. The car park has automated machines, a solitary flower vendor inside a glass shop, a couple of dogs who look surprisingly well fed and playful. On the road it is even quieter, almost eerily so, as we navigate through empty streets, weaving around police blockades, receiving nods from straight-faced policemen in heavy overcoats. We are near the embassies and government buildings, and its midnight on a Sunday after all, which likely explains the deserted feeling that permeates the landscape of our drive from the airport to our hotel. Still, Drew thinks so far Delhi feels more like East Berlin than what he had anticipated. We pull up to the hotel and guards with flashlights check the trunk, the hood, and peer into our eyes. It is impossible to go through such a procedure without a rising fear creeping up, ever so slightly. Where is the shouting, the honking, the raucous color, the cacophony of sounds and noises? I am sure it is still there, but at Le Meridien, with its rising towers and slick lobby, overly air-conditioned, there is only a sense of containment, of a precariously maintained modernism, a cultivated minimalism notable not for the repose it provides but for what is lacking, what is kept away, at bay.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Just before sunset, we walk up the giant crumbly steps of Bayon, one of the remaining central temples of Angkor Wat. Enormous faces, with upturned mouths and peaceful eyes, loom above us, then around us. Carved into dark stone, these reliefs are mossy now, wild in both their proportions and their green edges. Within the temple’s recesses lie bats, we can hear their chirping, and in the dusky light, I wonder what other creatures, creepy-crawlies, lie in the shadows and crevices. The air is humid, still, and we have the temple nearly to ourselves. The place feels eery, inhabited, like history might jump straight out from the walls. I expect a tap on my shoulder, ancient ancestors poking their gnarled fingers at me. We have watched Indiana Jones Temple of Doom the night before, and the unfortunate consequence is that I feel that strange feeling of familiarity, of a surreal moment produced by the simulacra of Hollywood. We clamber around, snapping pictures, gazing up at the monumental artisanship of those who inhabited this place a millennium ago. Would they have known the legacy they were creating? Could they in their wildest dreams have imagined us, camera-clad travellers from the New World, coming to admire their work? The sky is darkening and we leave such musings behind, whisked away in our air-conditioned van to our nearby hotel to celebrate, of all things, Christmas. Our hotel plays Christmas music, the lobby is decorated with gingerbread houses and a festive tree, and the temples feel far away.

The next morning, we rent rickety old bicycles and cycle the four kilometers to Angkor Wat itself. A giant moat surrounds this temple, the largest and most impressive of the dynasty. We park our bikes amidst the chaos that is the entrance, and walk past long serpents of stone that line the wide walkway. Walking through the first set of gates, Angkor Wat appears in full, its heft and enormity palpable. From a distance, it conveys grandeur, and a sense of fortitude—the remnants of a once great and mighty empire. Up close, its intricacy reveals itself and our eyes soak up the details—bas-relief painstakingly carved to reveal elaborate scenes from Hindu mythology. Depicted are Vishnu, beautiful Lakshmi, the four-armed Shiva, Hanuman the monkey god, amidst warriors, devils, horses, and elephants. The churning sea of milk holds fantastical sea life, and a fight between good and evil. All of these stories are chiseled into sandstone, large blocks of which are now weathered, graying, yet surprisingly intact. The crowds clear out around lunchtime and again we experience of the magic of having space to explore, to move around unencumbered by jostling tourist groups.

Later in the afternoon, we bike to a set of farther out temples, easily located by looking for the lined-up tour buses. The temples themselves are crowded, making them harder to appreciate, but they are awe-inspiring nonetheless. Even more enjoyable is the biking around and between the temples. We bike along shaded tree-lined streets that are unexpectedly quiet, and soak in the natural landscape within which these man-made wonders are situated.  The first part of our bike ride feels pastoral—there are rice paddies and wandering skinny cows—but as we move farther out, forest takes over. We cross a bridge and gaze out over a marshy swamp, dotted in the distance with willowy trees. We reach another temple, this one quieter, almost hidden by the lush surrounding foliage. We look but do not stop, cycling onwards through gates carved with giant faces like those of Bayon. We are alone now, watched only by the row of statues that line the next bridge, and it is pure magic, the stuff of fantasy, only it is real, the time-worn vestiges of a vibrant civilization. That evening, amidst the gaudy lights and cheap bars of Siem Reap, I am relieved that the hordes of party-going tourists did not manage to discover our biking route. Over bites of delicious eggplant curry, noodle salad and coconut-cashew dip at local vegetarian restaurant (Chamkar, meaning farm in Cambodian), we take stock of the day. The Buddhist temples of Bagan lie behind us, the Taj Mahal ahead, and occupying the space in the middle of our journey, Ankgor Wat sits, timelessly, its network of temples mysteriously spread through overgrown jungle and marsh, its ethereal shapes and sizes making us wonder if we were ever really there.

Noodling around Southeast Asia

Alice fell down the rabbit hole and somewhere down there, Bangkok and Burma got all jumbled up. Culinary-speaking, that is. We had heard Bangkok was the stuff of foodie dreams—cheap eats to die for at endless stands of street food, homey kitchens serving up delicious spicy noodles and soups, alongside Thai fusion and elaborate high-end hotel breakfasts. We expected great food to basically rain down on us, amidst lively markets, temple sightseeing and nightlife. In contrast, Burma, we were told, had terrible food. Oily curries that turned one acquaintance into a fruitarian during her stay there. Get your fill of amazing food while you are in Thailand, was the advice.

True to the lore, the food we ate in southern Thailand, while staying at the Golden Buddha Resort on Ko Phra Thong, was exquisite. In each curry, the spices and herbs were well balanced in such a way that the dishes were simultaneously simple and complex. Each flavor—ginger, garlic, lemongrass, coconut and chili were the usual suspects—was distinct and identifiable, yet combined so that the whole proved to be greater than the sum of the parts. Vegetables were abundant and cooked to perfection: green curries with melt-in-your-mouth zucchini, yellow curries studded with earthy carrots, and a particularly tasty leafy broccoli sautéed in a slightly sweet, slightly savory soy and garlic sauce. A noteworthy dish served to us featured banana blossoms tossed in a coconut chili sauce. The heat was intense, but not overwhelming, and counter-posed with the creaminess of coconut, the dish as a whole was addictingly good. Feeling a cold coming on, I ordered a chicken soup one afternoon. Swimming in the pale yellow turmeric-infused broth were large sticks of lemongrass, cloves of garlic, coins of ginger—the most refreshing hot soup I have ever eaten. And, my cold was gone the next day. The banana fritters—baby bananas fried perfectly to be crunchy-on-the-outside, doughy-on-the-inside—were served piping hot with local honey, and were of course, delicious.

After our four days at the Golden Buddha, we headed to Burma for a week, prepared for bland, oily food. Our first evening in Yangon, staying in Chinatown, we walked out for a late night bite to eat on the street, our expectations low. The street was teaming with vendors, selling gargantuan fruit (jackfruit, papayas, dragonfruit and more), and all kinds of meat, noodles, and fried things. We grabbed two plastic stools at a noodle stand and arbitrarily picked two dishes—Mandalay noodles for Drew, Shan noodles for me. At first bite, I was in heaven. I have no idea what spices were put into that bowl—I know fried garlic was key—but the noodles were ridiculously tasty. Thin rice noodles, little bits of ground pork, green onions, fried garlic and…secret sauce?? Whatever was in there, it was delicious. We thought, its Chinatown, so maybe this is where the good food is? We left Yangon and headed to Inle Lake, thinking again that good food was behind us. And then…we found Lin Htet. Quite possibly my favorite restaurant of the trip, and an establishment I know I will be dreaming of for years to come. Let me be clear. When you go, you must order: Shan noodle salad, mixed vegetable salad, and you should probably also order: tea leaf salad and avocado salad. I’ll start with the Shan noodle salad. Unlike our Chinatown meal, these noodles were ‘dry’, meaning they did not come in a broth, as in a soup. Instead, they had been stir-fried with a healthy amount of greens, garlic, quality pieces of juicy pork, and again, some kind of Burmese secret sauce that I hope to figure out how to re-create one day. I really can’t put into words how good these noodles were, but I can tell you that we licked the bowl clean the first, second and yes third time we ordered these noodles during our three days at Inle Lake. The mixed vegetable salad is a close second in my books, and I again can’t quite describe why they were so good. I know it helped that they were cooked to the ideal consistency—not too crunchy, not too mushy—and that they were tossed with an excellent dressing that had peanuts, garlic, ginger, some chili (but not too much) and a lot of love, amongst other spices. I could eat those mixed vegetables every day and not get sick of them, of that I am sure. Their tea leaf salad—crunchy, nutty, slightly bitter—was also excellent, and the avocado salad—a hefty plate piled with chunks of creamy ripe local avocados dotted with tomato slices, salt and a lemony dressing—speaks for itself.

Inle, and the home cooking of Lin Htet, was the highlight of our Burmese culinary adventures, but Bagan also did not fail to disappoint. Lonely Planet steers one in the right direction when they recommend Aroma II (get the vegetable korma) and Be Kind to the Animals The Moon (crazy name, delicious food, order lime and ginger juice with your meal), but they forgot to mention the breakfast noodles at Black Bamboo. We had a tasty dinner at Black Bamboo—the tofu made of chickpea in tomato curry was particularly memorable—and on our last morning after a magical sunrise hot air balloon ride, we decided to head back there for a late breakfast. Drew ordered the breakfast noodles while I was boring and ordered muesli and yogurt. One bite of his noodles and I changed my mind—the muesli went into a takeaway container and a second plate of noodles arrived. These noodles were thicker in diameter than many of the thin rice noodles we’d been eating—closer to spaghetti size—and came lightly dressed with shallots, fried garlic, cilantro and a diced bright yellow-in-the-center hard-boiled egg. They were flavorful, surprisingly light and hit the spot. We spent the rest of the trip wishing we could have those noodles for breakfast again.

Fast forward through Cambodia (only food highlight there, a fantastic vegetarian restaurant called Chamkar at which you must order the melt in your mouth eggplant curry along with ‘wedding dip’ made from coconuts and cashew), and we touch down in Bangkok. It’s 10pm and we are itching to go out on the town and EAT! We have a lackluster rather oily bowl of noodle soup with icky fish balls across from the hotel but I blame it on the fact that we are staying around Patpong Market—essentially a red-light district (oddly also home to our Le Meridien hotel). We head to Chinatown and I’m ready for a noodle and snacky street food bonzanza. But oddly, nothing really looks that appealing. And in fact, a lot of the street food looks positively UNappealing—bad quality meat, overly fried items, and noodles that just look ho-hum. The ubiquitous signs for shark fin soup also make me uncomfortable. We are a bit confused but figure its Chinatown—we should figure out where the real Thai food is. I won’t retrace our steps through our disappointing culinary tour of Bangkok, but suffice to say after three days, we were somewhat bewildered. We nibbled our way through Chatuchak market (one of the largest open air markets in the world), we wandered around old Bangkok stopping in for a late lunch at Krua Aporn, an unassuming relatively cheap establishment voted one of Bankgok’s best restaurants, we tried out a higher-end ‘chic’ eatery for dinner, and yet an absolutely delicious meal, street food or not, proved elusive. We craved the delicious noodles of Myanmar, a country whose cuisine has been thoroughly dismissed in favor of Thailand’s supposed culinary delights. To be sure, the food we had in southern Thailand met if not exceeded our expectations—but we assumed that Bangkok would top even that. Perhaps it was a fluke, perhaps we just missed the mark entirely during our three days there, but in any case, we are here to dispel the myth of bad Burmese food. If you stay away from the curries (which are indeed oily), which is not very hard to do, you are likely to enter a world of deeply satisfying meals, served to you by people who seem proud to share their cuisine, and who have been spared, at least so far, the hordes of tourists that roam the streets of Bangkok.

Ballooning over Bagan

It is black when we wake, and we put on all our layers under the fluorescent light of our hotel room, bundling up to ward off the nip of the early morning air. A bus picks us up and takes us to a nearby field full of hurried activity. Men are scurrying about, spreading out large swaths of shadowed fabric across the grass. Oversized wicket baskets—which soon will contain us—lie on their sides, and mangy mutts sniff them, then turn to us. As we watch the gas canisters fire up, flames shooting into the inky air, the ground staff serve us tea and coffee, biscuits that leave crumbs nosed over by the dogs. We are going flying this morning, in the most fantastical storybook way—by hot air balloon.

Before we know it the fabric on the ground is puffing and rising, slowly forming itself into the shape of an oversized balloon. There are eight of them, and their dark red color fills the brightening sky above us. They are tethered to the baskets, which are now upright, beckoning us to hop in. First, we receive a safety briefing, instructions for takeoff and landing. Then we are given the signal, and we clamber over the basket’s sides, like kids tumbling into a laundry hamper. Our balloon captain, who hails from Sussex, England, fires up the cylinder, the crew unties our ground ropes, and seamlessly—we are off. The ground crew, smiling and waving, becomes smaller beneath us as we go up, up and up into the smoky pink morning air.  When we are at ‘cruising altitude’, the captain shuts of the flame, and we are caught off guard by the lovely silence, the noiseless floating. We and our neighboring balloons are suspended in the air by what feels like magic, a conjurer’s trick. Below us, Burmese families are waking, taking their morning tea, hopping on rusty bicycles, pedaling to and fro. A few glance up at us, waving, bemused looks on their faces. They have seen it before, these crazy tourists, paying astronomical amounts for aerial views of their sacred temples, their national heritage. We rise higher, the flame shooting up again, and now we hover above the first edifice in a sea of temples, strewn across the grassy dry landscape. It’s strangely a bit like being on safari, only instead of spotting the grey lumbering bodies of elephants, we are ogling the spires and crumbling walls of Bagan’s Buddhist temples, built by an overzealous convert, Bamar King Anawrahta, in the 11^th century. They are all sizes—some massive and reaching to the sky, others like part of a miniature figurine set. (Later we learn that over 4,000 temples were built here over a 230 year period, until Mongol invasions in 1287). They are linked by dusty roads, crisscrossed with horse cart and bicycle tracks, some made by us the previous day during our “e-scooter” explorations.

The sun is reaching higher now and the light’s color continues to shift, becoming more yellow, burning through some of the smoke from village fires that continues to hang in the air. We snap pictures, both of the temples and of the seven other suspended balloons. It is hard to say which is the more interesting perspective, the timeless landscape below us, or the flying contraptions around us, their old-world charm captivating, enchanting. We float on but the hour passes quickly and soon we find ourselves descending, instructed to take the “brace position.” We crouch down, aware that our captain is performing some tricky maneuvering. We feel our balloon lower, then rise, then lower again and swipe against a prickly tree with a THWACK! Our hearts beat, and then with a quick relatively painless thump, we have landed, safely. We emerge out of our basket and are greeted with champagne, juice, and homemade banana bread and croissants. We toast to our aerial adventure, our birds-eye view of Bagan, our magical morning.

Inle Lake, Myanmar

On a shallow lake in Myanmar’s Shan State, men slap their paddles onto glassy water and pull through tangles of lotus root to propel their wooden skiffs forward. They twirl their toes around old wooden oars, ballerina-like, to guide the direction of their crafts. Through the morning mist rising off the lake, we gawk, watching them like they are human storks, delicately balanced, graceful, and poised for the click of our cameras’ shutters.

We are on Inle Lake, a marshy amoeba-shaped body of water that lies like a giant shimmering puddle between two brownish-gold hillsides, terraced with corn and soybeans, interspersed with bright sparks of wildflowers and the thatched roofs of farmer abodes. From the sky, the hills are oddly reminiscent of Northern California wine country. It is a land that is a patchwork of muted greens and browns, scrubby, simultaneously beckoning yet relentlessly dry. The lake, then, with its watery abundance, feels illogical. From the vantage point of a low slung wooden boat, the hills retreat, and take their place as background to the ethereality of the lake.

As the boat skims the surface of the water, speeding through reed-lined channels (for our tourist boat is motor propelled), we feel the nip of the cold morning air on our cheeks, our toes. We can’t see much, save the tops of village houses and wood smoke rising above the tall lanky reeds. When we pop out of the channel, onto the lake proper, there is a sudden sense of expanse, and our boat now feels small, exposed, and unrestricted. We squint our eyes at villages and new hotels, dotting the lake’s other side.  Our driver gives a quick shout and our boat veers to the left, skirting the lake’s eastern shore. Now we are passing a village whose houses are on stilts, where residents move from one place to another via long rickety boardwalks connecting one precariously perched house to the next. Boats pull up at general stores and bars, depositing customers and patrons who clamber up water-logged wooden steps to buy rice, coffee powder, or to sip a cup of tea and slurp down a breakfast of noodle soup. We continue on until we reach firmer ground. We reach the village of Maing Thauk that today is holding the region’s main market, which circles weekly through the lake’s bigger villages.

 

At the open-air market, we find an overwhelming array of goods, some meant for tourists—the rows of painted wooden Buddha statues and masks—and some for locals—blankets, shoes, plastic buckets. And then of course, there is the food. The section of fruit, vegetable and meat stands assault the senses. There are heaps of vegetables we’ve never seen before, piles of spices and unidentifiable sweets, stacked chickens and baskets of dried fish, hooves, tongues, and other bloodied animal body parts. More appetizing are the bowls of noodles ladled out of huge steel pots by quick-moving vendors, who sprinkle chilies and bits of fried garlic on top before serving them up to market goers. We spend a while at the market, slowly weaving our way through the maze of stalls, and leave just as the sun starts to warm the earth, and our still-chilled (and underdressed) bodies. We came extra early to the market, and the price to pay for the lack of fellow tourists has been a rude awakening to central Burma’s cold winter mornings.

Thankfully, the day heats up as we continue our journey, exploring the lake’s floating villages and gardens. We visit gold-encrusted temples, dusty antique shops and a lovely restaurant (aptly named “Nice Restaurant”) that serves us large bowls of noodle and lentil soup in a delicately flavored broth, brimming with fresh vegetables. The experience of pulling up to each spot via boat, the drivers vying for a ‘parking spot,’ is oddly reminiscent of Venice. We continue on like this for most of the afternoon, and at the end of the day, just when the sound of the boat’s motor is beginning to wear on us, we pull up near to our hotel. The magic of the lake is gone, we are now just in a noisy, congested canal, where similarly outfitted tourists are climbing out of their respective tour boats. Tomorrow, we will venture into those dusty hills; tonight, we retreat into our hotel, where to ward off the night’s chill, a crackling fire and glasses of a local red wine await.