More general info :)

Bike decoration...one thing I have noticed here is that everything is decorated differently! The bikes, the trucks, the women... :) The trucks are especially decorated with all sorts of colors and swirlying paint designs, murals and always a name or some words on the front. The women wear the most colorful saris and lots of gold jewelry and the men are decked out in plaids. Even motorbikes are individualized - as that's what I think it is - with some many people around and so much similarity in desigh (the Pulsars are everywhere, the trucks are only 3 makes, a sari is a sari, maybe they wear a salwar kameez, the guys wear lungis and western shirts...somehow you have to be different :). We have some individuality on our bikes, too - A's bike came with some Sikh stickers and I ride with Tibetan prayer flags on the front of mine - when the flags blow in the wind it carries the prayers :)

Food selection :)

We have had lots of different kinds of food! Recently we had croissants :) There is quite a lot of western food available (by name, some of it doesn't resemble the stuff one is used to :). Most menus, in your typical restaurant, have a good selection of Indian dishes - both local and regional - and Chinese dishes. In north India you get a selection of south Indian dishes and in south India you get a selection of north Indian dishes - we try to eat the local food :) Some places have a tandoor and others don't. It is usually an evening thing and it very much affects the availability of bread and the dish selection. If the tandoor is not available you get paratas and chipatis (and puris for breakfast) and lots of curries. If the tandoor is on you can also get roti, naan and kulcha plus anything they choose to cook in the tandoor (veg, paneer, fish, etc.)

For breakfast there is always a dosa, it's south Indian, but we got had them in Delhi. A dosa is like a crepe but made with fermented lentil and rice flour. It's rolled or folded on a plate (or a banana leaf :) and you get some small dishes of sauce to go with it - typically sambar (a lentil veg soup) and some chutney (coconut and sometimes a veg one, it's green - both are spicy). The dosa can have stuff in it, too - a masala dosa has spicy potato in it (yum, my fave :). You are expected to tear hunks off and dip in the sauce. You can also have puri (puffed bread) and sambar, idlys (steamed ground rice patties, really nice, too) with sambar or vada (savory donut) and sambar.

We maybe have a small snack for lunch (we are saving ourselves for dinner :). When it comes to dinner we like to try all sorts of different things - a protien curry and a veg curry, or one of those in the tandoor :) For the protien curries we have a dal (and tehre are lots of dals :) or a paneer. For the veg we have lots of choice!!!! Mixed veg, spinach, mushrooms, green peas (which I love!!!), bindi (okra), eggplant/aubergine, gobi (cauliflower)...it's wonderful. We like spice, so we don't go for kormas. Our current favorite is makanwalla, and the one we had the other night had lots of clove and cinnamon. We also usually have rice (A is a rice-fiend!) and I usually make the bread choices :) There is a lot of rice selection - jeera rice is just with cumin seeds, or plain rice or veg rice, the other night we tried curd rice - rice and yogurt mixed.

For the king of condiments (you know who you are :) there is also a lot of pickle around. In Belguam we stumbled on a pickle shop - they only sold pickle and they had about 15 jars in front (all homemade) and shelves of the packaged stuff behind! For awhile we had a lot of mango pickle, then we had some FAB lime pickle in Kodai - it's all homemade and it's easy to make (so they tell us :). First soak whatever it is you want to pickle in salt water for 15 days and then pull it out and mix with chili - viola! pickle fit for a king :)

Later!!!!