Taktsang Lhakhang
It took hours of hiking to reach Taktsang Lhakhang or the Tiger\'s Nest Monastery near Paro, Bhutan, one of the most sacred sites in this Himalayan country. Perched on a cliff high up in the mountain, this place can be reached only by foot, horse or a flying tiger. I wish I could fly...
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Relic of the soviet era, this canteen serves a delicious meal in a minimalist setting.
After spending hours visiting the Arboretum and walking back to Sochi town, I was pretty exhausted and I went to this restaurant – Stolovaya No. 17 – for a late lunch. Stolovaya (meaning ‘canteen’) is a chain (run by government?) and there is another one (No. 57) is in Moscow. During the days of Soviet era, people formed long queues, waiting for their turn to get a cheap meal. The restaurant houses a kitchen (which you can see from the outside) that is full of babushkas talking to each other loudly, busy doing something while you hear constant cling-clang sounds of steel pots and pans in the background.
People stand in a queue while babushkas serve you what you ask for.
Nobody will greet you at the door, you are supposed to grab a plate and stand in that queue next to a big table filled with trays of food. You pick what you want from the options you have. Grab some meat, vegetables, salads, bread and even some desserts before you finish picking up your glass of tea. “Лимон?” (लीमोन?) you will be asked if you want a fresh slice of lemon in your tea. Finally, and here’s the most fascinating part, the babushka at the cash counter will look at your tray and announce loudly the food you have. Another babushka sitting next to her, with her head bent over a wooden Russian abacus, will rapidly move the beads with both hands. As soon as the sound, which I like, of banging wooden beads on wooden frame is over, your total will be announced, “сто сорок шесть рублей пожалуйста.” (one hundred and forty six Roubles please). I kept asking her “Сколько? Сколько?” (how much? how much?) since I am not so quick with numbers, until she waved the receipt on my face.
Russian Abacus, used to calculate the bill. The last time I used an abacus must have been over 20 years ago!
You will then be handed Aluminum cutlery, ONE napkin, and then you must immediately proceed to the dining area without lingering at the counter to take pictures of the abacus, or else you will be yelled at (guess how I found that out). The dining area, that smells like floor cleaner, has plastic chairs, rickety iron frame wooden tables with covered with plastic cloth on top (that almost smells like old plastic, you know, with an oily smell – very common in government restaurants in India) and plastic flowers to make the dining experience lively.
So I really don’t know what class of people eats at this (or such) restaurants, but everyone, visitors and employees, were very curious to watch every move I made, every breath I took. Oh god, and we are trying to be subtle.. 
The grand dining room.
I was delighted to experience this post-communist restaurant, and henceforth I am going to claim that I had an authentic experience of dining in a Soviet-era restaurant. 
Finally, that’s what I got. I was starving and I enjoyed every bit of my food.
Delicious food. Bread, chicken breast, vegetables, salad and soup. Don’t go by the colour of the borscht – you WILL NOT get even remotely spicy food anywhere. But all the food I had was extremely tasty, including the hard bread. I queued up once again to get some dessert and burped to my stomach’s content. 
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Spending sufficient time at Chimi Lhakhang and the archery ground, we returned to the Sopsokha village. The village is nothing but a collection of few shops and houses on the Thimphu-Punakha road. Since we were hungry, we went to a ‘tourist restaurant’.
A house with some government offices on the ground flooe
Never go to a tourist restaurant. We were welcomed, offered food which tasted great but left a very bitter aftertaste. The lunch cost us Rs 350 (~$8) each, before tax. 350?? We’d usually get 3 lavish lunches for that amount of money! It turned out that this ‘tourist restaurant’ was actually made to cater to foreign tourists only. Indians are not included in ‘foreign’ per se since we do not have to pay the $200-$250 fee that the foreign tourists pay per day (Info here). For foreign travelers, food is included in their daily tariff, so the restaurant can charge exorbitant amounts and the tourists seldom know. We did. I came out swearing at my stupidity, I should have asked the price before.
The food was good, but the cost wasn't. Accidentally we ended up in a restaurant catering to foreign tourists with foreign prices!
As if the deep trauma caused by this experience was not enough, we still had to hunt for a transport to Punakha, 8 km away. So much for the blessings from Divine Madman! He he he!
We were determined to walk for 2.5 hours if we didn’t get a transport. I started flagging down every vehicle (since I often do that!) hoping to hitch a ride. Finally a guy stopped, made enquiries, gave us a lift, and off we went on our way to Punakha.
Atleast we saved spending Rs. 20 for the taxi…!
PS: Someone asked me why I was bitching about the price when I lived in a western country.
I’m sorry if you don’t get it, its not about the money.
- Had the restaurant put a sign saying ‘please donate for…’, I would have thought. But charging Rs. 350 for a meal that should cost Rs. 60 is unfair in my opinion.
- We were not informed in advance, but I agree that we should have asked ourselves.
- Secondly, even the foreign tourists don’t pay for lunch here. The $200 they pay to the government daily includes meals, transport, accommodation and guide.
- Finally, one should look at the place where the service is offered. INR:USD exchange rate might be 50:1 but in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity) the ratio is 8 or 10:1. So if you REALLY want to know, this lunch cost us between $35-$40, in Bhutan.
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Shantanu asked me to write something about Peruvian food. Now unlike him, I am not a foodie, so I don’t really enjoy food by the same magnitude as he does. In fact, for a long time I thought that eating food is a waste of time and there must be ways to avoid it. hmm… sounds strange, I know.
Before leaving, my Peruvian friends told me that Peru is not easy on vegetarians, so I started preparing weeks in advance in Toronto by eating meat – chicken, pork, ham, various kinds of fish.. While a vegetarian guy can comfortably survive in Peru, this meat eating did help me get around.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner:
Govinda chain of restaurants which is present in almost every city. They make simple food that is fully vegetarian, nutritious and cheap – just what a backpacker needs. These restaurants are managed by Hare-Krishna (ISKON) people and if you are Indian you will get a royal treatment.
Lunch at Govinda: Mixed spicy vegetables with rice. I love lemonade. (Everything on table – $3.5)
Potato and rice is the staple diet and most meals have a potato soup, potato vegetable and even a potato dessert in a typical 3 course meal. In one of the villages I stayed, the house lady prepared lunch which consisted of about 10 varieties of potatoes – different tastes, shapes, sizes and colours. Potato is native to Peru and there are about 2,000 varieties cultivated here. When the Spanish conquerors first came across the potato, they called it ‘food for Indians and animals‘ (Indians i.e. natives). The potato has gone a long way since then.
Potato Soup
A couple of times I ate at cheap restaurants where Peruvian worker class (taxi drivers, laborers, sweepers etc. and uh, backpackers who have no money) eats, I ordered a five course meal which cost me S/. 5 ($1.6 or Rs. 60). This is extremely cheap food by Peruvian standards. The first course was a potato salad, followed by starters (fried potatoes), Potato soup, and then the actual meal was simply cooked potato’s with rice. It tasted very similar to what’s called उपासाची बटाट्याची भाजी (potato vegetable made during fasting days) in Marathi. Just when I thought this was over, they brought desserts – yes, made of sweet potato. Oh God!
Potato with rice. (5 course meal at a cheap restaurant – $1.6)
Other than that, I am big on breakfasts and I have a gigantic breakfast early in the morning. Eggs, bacon/ham, bread, butter, jam and tons of caffeine. That’s the recipe for a great day. I usually snack on some fruits – bananas, apples etc during the day which is convenient if you are traveling in a bus or a combi. It can be shared with fellow passengers and is great tool to strike conversations, afterall everyone I met loved sharing food with a foreigner. Remember to carry your own knife, always peel the fruits and never wash them with tap water.
Typical Breakfast ($2.5-$4)
Peruvian eating style is very ‘western’, probably influenced by Spanish. I never saw anyone eat but with forks and knives. Table manners are fun to watch, esp in cheap eating places – people talk loudly, call the waiters loudly but in a friendly way, share food with each other and are not overly concerned if a few bits are stuck around their lips. Tipping is not very popular except in touristic places.
Mint sauce (chutney)
Alpaca – the Andean sheep, Llama – the Andean camel and Guinea pigs are meat specialties. I had Alpaca and Llama only once and while it was not bad, there is only so much meat I can happily eat. Ceviche the seafood is something I liked a lot and is very hardcore Peruvian. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of Llama and Ceviche dishes.
Alpaca meat. (Dinner at upscale restaurant – $6-$8)
Desserts are my weakness and cakes, pastries and icecreams are available everywhere. So are fresh fruit juice and milk shake stalls but avoid them if you are worried about your stomach.
Desserts and dark coffee – nothing like it really. (Dessert bars – $3-$5)
Street food:
There were a number of roadside vendors in most of the cities making barbecue meat or kebabs. This is hugely popular among the tourist crowd, especially the Israelis who are all over the place. I kept away from street food mostly except for Chicken kebabs until the last day when I committed the sin. Only 6 hours prior to my return flight, I ate fish on the street with a newly made friend and that was it. Within few hours, I was sick with diarrhoea and my whole return journey was ruined.
Its strange to write about food because unlike many travelers, I am not curious about food. Do let me know what you think. Maybe some day I’ll discover the joys of eating!
cheers,
Priyank.
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A long walk
Picture taken: May 2005, about 10,000ft in Garhwal Himalayas. Here is the travelogue of my trip.
One of the interesting things about high altitude camping is the unique taste of the food. Above the tree line, water becomes more-or-less tasteless. Since Indian cooking involves generous use of water (from stewing vegetables to preparing dough), food cooked here does tastes funny. जेवणात चव उतरत नाही (the taste doesn’t sink into the food). Even before you hit the tree-line, cooking yummy food becomes increasingly difficult.
There are other operational issues:
- Due to low atmospheric pressure, boiling point of water reduces. So, water boils at a much lower temperature, for example, at the place where this picture was taken the BP would be approximately 90° (Rambodoc would say: “Its cool to boil water”)
- The only source of ignition is firewood. The three basic factors required for a fire are – (1) source of ignition, (2) Oxygen and (3) heat. The last two being less available, it takes long time to light a fire.
- More water needs to be used to compensate faster losses (moisture in the air is very low).
- Finally, food needs to be cooked for a longer time.
Why??
Consider boiling an egg. In the plains, water boils at 100° and it takes 5 minutes for an egg to boil (assume). At 10,000 ft however, water boils at 90°, and in order to equalize the heat (calories) gained by the egg, it has to absorb heat for a longer time. The cooks that I spoke to told me that it takes 25 minutes to boil one egg (boy! thats a hard-shelled egg).
Turning up heat will not make a difference. Figure out why
Baking food needs even more care, such as leavening gases in breads and cakes expand more, or an extra egg may be required to enhance bonding and strength. I have no knowledge about cooking meat though.
Can I cook the same taste food somewhere else? I tried using Distilled water once, but thats just one factor. Perhaps in a laboratory simulation, cooking few grams of high-altitude tasting food would be possible!
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