With the family (and me) needing a break and a need to keep up with the new chefs, we hit the road in search of fun, food and learning ... If i've done this right, you should see our pictures below. I've uploaded them to flickr so if there's any you like, click them and you should be able to see a bigger version. Hope you like - we did.
So I'm going to start with *why* we all ended up travelling halfway round the world with notebooks and a camera.
It all started when we were renovating Babur. We hired two new chefs: our head chef, Jiwan Lal, and our sous chef, Praveen Kumar Gupta... both from the Oberoi Group of Hotels in India. Jiwan came to us from the Cecile Hotel in Simla, an old hill-station and fashionable resort (he tells me) while Praveen came from the Rajvilas in Jaipur (a 5* deluxe Oberoi hotel) and the more he talked about Jaipur, the state capital of Rajasthan, the more I wanted to go and see what the fuss was all about. Once I made the mistake of mentioning this to the family, the trip became inevitable.
Food = travel = learning.
I think it's easy to get caught up in the technicalities of food, cooking and kitchen practicalities when you're in this business but it’s fantastic on (rare) occasions to go and actually see where it comes from and get a sense of the soul and spirit of it. Food is about more than just ingredients, preparation and cooking times. Regional dishes exist for reasons of culture, practicalities, climate, history or strange twists of fate. That's why they're so great to explore. Every ingredient, every technique, even how you serve the dishes is steeped in history and reason. When you cook regional, you somehow connect to that regions past.
Anyway... our trip finally happened almost a year after we re-opened. It was a busy year but it was well worth the wait. After the usual packing/travel/airport hell, there was no stopping us when we arrived in Delhi with Pravin, who came with us to guide us through the cooking of Rajasthan so that we could bring our customers a good taste of some of the local food....
...But first, we did some window shopping.
Our first meals: a taste of India...
I had really wanted to go to a restaurant I had heard so much about: The Bukhara, at the Maurya Sheraton. I'll just say that for an establishment with such a reputation, it was disappointing. I was gutted. The family were happy to be on terra firma and eating. I supposed two out of three isn't bad for a new arrival.
Breakfast at our hotel (the Shangri La) was fantastic... idlis and sambhar, dosas, upma (spicy semolina porridge) tawa paratha and aloo pao (potatoes spiced with mustard seeds in a soft roll). Eating breakfast in a different country is always excellent and exciting. (Maybe bleary-eyed tourists waking up in the UK really do get the same rush at the sight of egg, bacon and fried slices). Once our breakfast woke us up, we realised it was time to take out the camera and go sightseeing.
Then finally, the sights...
First off, we saw Humayun's tomb (son of Babur and the second Mughal Emperor of India)... one of the first great buildings in the Mughal style. Then we went to the old part of Delhi to the Jami Masjid, built by Shah Jehan and the main mosque of Delhi. It faces the Red Fort (also built by Shah Jehan). Just behind the Jami Masjid the food vendors sell all kinds of things, like kebabs and pani puri and they're famous for selling biryani on a Friday after prayers. Good solid street cooking.
Last stop of the day was just south of Delhi to see the Qutab Minar complex. You can see the five-story minaret for miles around – it's over 70 metres tall and it was built in the 12th century. It was built by Maharajah Jai Singh II in 1728 and was painted a sort of pink when the Prince of Wales visited in 1860 (just like the Queen, everywhere he went smelled of fresh paint... he probably thought thats what the world smelt like.).
We got to Jaipur the next day, the famous Pink City of India.
Its incredible. Not only are the buildings pink, like the Hawa Mahal (Palace of the Winds – it's on the cover of the Lonely Planet guide to India) and the City Palace (busy Maharajah's don't have time to commute from the suburbs every day) , but the women and men wear pink too... and so do the elephants and the camels. Everywhere you look you see pink.
We started at the City Palace and decided to take a picture while we were still fresh. It's a maze of arcades and courtyards and really beautiful doorways like the Peacock Gate. Check out the pictures for the detail on it. It's the kind of astonishing craftsmanship that we used to be able to pull off but seem (the world over) to have pretty much forgotten how to do now.
Jai Singh also built the Jantar Mantar, which is an astronomical observatory – the buildings look like a lot of giant sundials and staircases and it makes you feel very small. Like a Lilliputian. Or like you've been hit by a shrink ray. After being suitably amazed and lost, we managed to see the back view of the Palace of the Winds on our way to the Amber Fort.
Getting lost abroad can also be fun.
The Amber Fort is just outside Jaipur and it's built on a range of hills. It's a steep climb up, but not if you book an elephant for the trip. Consider us booked - as tourists, there was no way we were going without an elephant.
The elephants aren't that fast, but I thought the way they rock from side to side was very soothing (although some some of the other visitors were complaining of seasickness). There was plenty to see and there was even the chance for some drive-by shopping, although the rush hour can cause some traffic snarl-ups.
It may be called a fort, but it looked more like a palace to me... After you get off your elephant (no small feat), you walk up this double-flight of stairs, and then you come out into a courtyard in front of the Ganesha Gate which is all made from inlaid, dyed plaster. It's too good a photo opportunity to resist and a great place to pause and find your feet again.
There's a lot to see and you could really just stop and stare at so many insanely beautiful things... like the elephant-headed columns and the mirrored ceilings and walls. And that's before you get on to the rooftop courtyard with the chatris where you can look out on to the hills all around you, with the walls of the fort along the ridge. You feel like you’re floating on the roof of the world and it’s all kind of Lost Horizons....
The monkeys by the way are fantastic. And excellent climbers. No elephant riding for them... They're also not pink. Well.. not yet. Sure it's only a matter of time before someone spots that and sorts them out though.
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