Is food the best India has to offer?

Trip Start Oct 08, 2007

110

Trip End Dec 16, 2008

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Flag of India Thanjavur, India
Friday, December 14, 2007

Thanjavur is not much of a town. The Brithadishwara temple, a world heritage site, didn't look all too impressive in the gloomy light of the rainy day. Positively, I managed to sneak-pick few photos of the temple elephant.

My personal highlights from Thanjavur are an all-you-can-eat-vegetable-tally lunch for R20 (50 cents) and the visit to the Royal palace. The palace was a pile of old bricks, but the guys who was checking the tickets at the door was openly smoking a joint and offered to share it with us. Had we taken him up on the offer, the place might have looked more exciting:)

A lot of people over here are stoned any time of day (both tourist and locals). That's the only way to explain the elaborate ritual of making a coffee order:
"Coffee with milk, no sugar please"
"Black coffee?"
"With milk, please"
"Ah, milk coffee

50 cent lunch. Loved it!

! Okay"
"Yes, no sugar please!"
     "No sugar?!" (with surprise)
"Yes, no sugar, with milk"
     "Okay, okay, milk coffee, no sugar"

40% of the time, I end up drinking my coffee with lots of sugar and a good dose of humor.

On the only evening I spend in Thanji, instead of dinner I had massala nuts and few beers with Sean and bunch of local guys (no women in sight) in the only bar in town (could be the only legal bar). Next morning, I had my first dosa for breakfast - an oily pancake-like dish, topped with cheese and beans and dhall. I greatly enjoyed the dosa, but very unwisely weighted myself after breakfast at on the restaurant scale (who puts a scale in a restaurant!?) I discovered in horror that I've put on 10kg only a moth after I've lost 5kg on the Everest Base Camp treck. Even though the net damage is 5kg over my usual weight, that is a bad news to start any day, let alone a very rainy, muddy day to which you woke up in a cheap hotel room, next to the buss station. Such is life I guess.
***
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Hugs & Kisses, Vik