Most trips to Kashmir are three or four days long: much too short to sift through a jumble of poor choices. This list is a recommendation of various possibilities in Srinagar, all in the realm of eating and drinking. Do bear in mind that meals in most restaurants are likely to be tailored to tourists…
In 1953, a British led expedition to Mount Everest included a New Zealand bee-keeper and a Sherpa who had settled in Darjeeling. There was rather a lot at stake. Ever since the discovery and the naming of the mountain, it had been identified with the British. Or so the British themselves liked to think. They…
If your hotel has the mud walls and back-to-basics furniture of a traditional Indian home, and the electricity comes from a high-tech windmill, chances are that you’re staying in a Gujarat Tourism Holiday Resort. Chances are too, that you won’t find a better introduction to this multi-faceted State, where it’s quite in order to go…
As symbols of normalcy go, the all-glass front of Pick n Choose on Residency Road, Srinagar, is as telling as any. Five years ago, you couldn’t find glass doors in Srinagar – they’d be a sitting duck for a terrorist’s bullet. Five years ago, you wouldn’t even have wanted the transparency of glass. Thick wooden…
Blurb: A mixed bag of unbelievably good and ‘what the customer wants’ Atmospherics: It has much going for it, location-wise. On the ground floor of a building on Janpath, right next door to Shiv Sagar (same owner), it is down a narrow alley within the building itself. So the ceiling is a blaze of lights,…
Delhi’s best-loved restaurants are not merely those that have stood the test of time; they are the ones that have broken new ground at the time they opened their doors. More importantly, they should have kept up their relevance to the present time. For the last ten years, restaurants have been opening and closing at…
Cuisine: Mediterranean Blurb: bookshelves, multi-level café, bar and restaurant with style and flair Gurgaon Sector 29 is a smorgasbord of restaurants and bars. Zura is for those times when you’re catching up with friends and want to nibble rather than gorge. Atmospherics: It is a breezy café with bookshelves and a laden pastry counter. You…
The best part about Paradise is that you can carry it around in your head. I was delighted when a shopkeeper in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul called me Hema Malini. Not, I hasten to add, because I am a fan of that actress, nor indeed because I have any pretensions of looking like a…
It was my very first meal at the family homestead in Srinagar. We were all seated on the thickly carpeted floor, with copper bowls in front of us covered entirely with a fine layer of tin. The soft, warm glow of copper was lost, alas, but the gleam of tin in the family kitchen made…
Goa with its unique assortment of spices and veggies opens up a whole new world of indigenous cuisine It was hot and overcrowded in the Friday market at Mapusa. On tiny squares of gunny sacks that lined the pavements and roads, hundreds of village ladies had staked out their space to sell a bewildering assortment…