Road dahl: pictures of food from my travels in India

Some pics of India that make me want to go back right now

In 2015, I had an early mid-life crisis. The band I had been in for more than a decade, a band I had sacrificed everything for, had broken up and the new band I had tentatively started was still at the ‘just for fun’ stage. I had been working in cafes, shops, venues, and as a fledgling English language teacher saving up pennies in a jar for a few years with all and any holiday time used for touring and then suddenly it was over. I had absolutely no commitments apart from my partner, Giz, who was as freewheelin’ as me. We had a six-monthly apartment lease coming up for renewal, a month of rent and bills we’d set aside from wages for the next month, the deposit we’d get back and a couple of grand each we’d saved over the past few years. Then my beloved grandad passed away, leaving me with a little bit of cash. We added it all up. Shall we get married? We wondered. Nah, fuck it, let’s go travelling. If not now, when?

We’d given ourselves about a month’s notice, and got as many vaccines as possible (we were too late for rabies so had to spend the entire time resisting the urge to cuddle stray animals). I’d always read travel blogs so I had an idea of ways to make it cheap. We would aim for an average of a tenner a day each on food and a tenner a day each on accommodation with a small extra fund for trips we didn’t want to miss out on about once a month and see how far we could go.

We booked a cheap flight to Bergerac to spend a couple of weeks in a remote village in France looking after someone’s dogs, and that was all the plan we had. After that, we looked on flight apps and picked the cheapest flight to the most interesting next country in the direction of New Zealand where my brother who lived there would put us up and feed us. At some point during a stint of volunteering in Rhodes Greece, we made the snap decision to go to India. A mad scrabble for a visa and a discounted flight very luckily pulled in via a friend who used to put on gigs and had gone on to work for Etihad, we landed in Delhi with no real clue what to expect.

Delhi was the most exhilarating and bewildering place we’d ever been. We sat on a blanket-covered seat in the back of an airport cab, handed the driver a scrap of paper with the address of a doctor we would be staying with and lurched into traffic consisting of cars, trucks, bikes, goats, pigs, cows and everything else you can imagine, all honking and chaotic and smoggy and truly jaw-dropping. Giz looked at me like, wtf, and we spent the next month crying tears of horror, joy and every emotion in between. Anyone who ever asks my favourite place I’ve been gets the same answer: India. Without a doubt: India. The best and the worst place on earth.

Here are some pictures of the food we ate while we were there. I had no smartphone (it had smashed in France and I’d had no money to replace it) so we were using a crappy old digital camera and booking flights on a cheap tablet. The pics are unplanned, unrefined snapshots of our trip. Hope you get something out of them.

All images are by me, Kelly Bishop, please don’t reuse them without permission but please do share this post with anyone you think would enjoy it.

First night in Delhi. No idea what was ok to eat. Veggie takeaway. Incredible.

Lunch at a lady’s house near an elephant sanctuary in Jaipur.

A breakfast of sweet dosas, coconut chutney and fresh pineapple at a homestay in Kerala.

Diwali in Mumbai, we stayed with an artist who greeted us with homemade chai and traditional treats of poha (flattened rice) and traditional Gujarati mohanthal, both faves of the Hindu god Krishna apparently.

A welcome meal on a houseboat in Kerala we stayed on for a couple of nights. Fresh fish in spice paste, rice, dal, sambal, sabzi, salad. Just incredible.

One of many meals we had in ten days in an ashram in Rishikesh. All food and yoga was included in the price of £14 per night for two of us. The food was sattvic so vegetarian with no onion or garlic and tastier than it looks.

This is one of my favourite pictures of a paratha maker at a truck stop somewhere between Delhi and Rishikesh. One of the best meals we had in India.

Parathas for breakfast made by the guy above.

We didn’t eat meat until we got to Kerala and we didn’t drink any booze until we got to Mumbai. This is at Hard Rock Mumbai where we went to watch some local heavy metal bands play.

A happy veg wala at the market in Jaipur.

Piles of golden Indian snacks at Jaipur market: sev, lentils, nuts and so on.

Appetite whetted? More images of markets, street food and people are below for my paid subscribers. Thank you so much, you are literally keeping my bills paid now I have gone freelance and your support for my writing means the world.