Bakery Goodness in Patel Nagar, West Delhi, India

Bakery Goodness (# 2 of previously unpublished drafts from 2014!)

In my second day of exploring Delhi, I visited the same Chocolate & Cake Studio for another cappuccino as I had enjoyed my first visit and after some friendly conversations with the owner and shopkeeper. This time, I decided to return and sample something baked. 
I ordered a slice of red velvet cake because it looked tasty and was the last lonely slice of it, just asking to be eaten. A first bite told me it was terrific! I had barely put the fork down before the baker comes out and hands me two hot cookies and asks me to try them. One was chocolate and the other a white chocolate/cranberry cookie. HOW could I refuse? I mean, it would be rude, wouldn't it? I took a bite and POW, they tasted great!!! As soon as I put them down and took another sip of my cappuccino,I began trying to figure this out, having a tiny VSG stomach now, I had to have a plan. I had to agree to eat so much sugar and also find out how to take it back to my hotel without it completely melting. Before I could finish the thought, guess what?! The baker....he came back out with a warm piece of apple cinnamon cake! 

At this point, I mentioned that I had VSG surgery and that meant that my stomach was very small so I could not eat everything. He said it was no problem and that he was taking some cake across the street to a friend in a neighboring shop and for me to just try it. Now, I strongly dislike baked apples, I always have, but this was THE BEST apple cinnamon concoction I'd ever had! The apples were not offensively huge and they weren't even trying to overtake the cake. In fact, they were small, well-behaved and well-blended, and the cake was SO soft and fluffy that it created a new airy taste. Wow. Cakevana. 
HELP!

Today, my last day in Delhi, I am back at the same place, this time simply to cool off and drink some lime n lemoni soda! It's called Limca and IS THE BEST. 

                                     

I'll probably order lunch here as well :-) If you're in this area, make a point to come here. The management and staff are very friendly and all the different bakery and food items are too!

I did end up ordering lunch here and guess what I ate, just for kicks? 
A DELHI sandwich, ha! :-)

                 

The Corn Man

In moving my blog to its new domain, I noticed several drafts that needed publishing. Since I'm planning on heading back to India again this summer (and hopefully years beyond that as well), I decided to write a post which will contain links to all previous posts and to also publish the two drafts that hadn't been finished. :-)

This is a scene from one of my walks around the West Patel Nagar neighborhood in Delhi, India. The serenity of the scene so transfixed me that I only snapped one photo. I had been walking for a few hours in the unforgiving Indian sun and rather desperately wished to sit down and to drink something cold. After looking a while, I came upon The Chocolate & Cake Studio. It had a great open window-front in a café style and had people-watching potential. I also assumed that they offered cold drinks so I came on in. After discovering they had no bottled water and that their drinks were not actually that cold, I decided to get a cappuccino and sat down to try and cool off. Maybe something hot would help me pretend it was cooler outside... There was no air conditioning except for a fan, BUT THAT WAS GLORIOUS! Soon, I fell into peaceful laziness as I watched the steady stream of cars, tatas, carts, motorcycles, and bicycle-taxis speed by. The Delhi streets are more like arteries with blood flowing through them than our US streets. The flow continues from several directions in spite of lights and whilst it may slow at times, the pulse keeps up without as many stops as we have. When it ceases, it has all the uneasiness of walking into a forest alone and the birds stop singing and all is mute. It makes you careful and slightly nervous. We often have to see US street footage sped up to see this kind of pulse though. The loudness also gets a bit annoying at times with all of the incessant honking. I sat and enjoyed watching people walk by and folks occasionally appearing from surrounding apartment balconies to look over the world below, hang laundry, or sit and drink tea. It's a special treat to observe the world and its energy from time to time.

From my personal observatory, I noticed an elderly man pushing a cart full of something yellow under a grey-brown blanket. This was unremarkable for the area until he stopped outside a sports clothing bodega and pulled the blanket off of a huge pile of corn. He then took two pieces of corn, pulled back the husks gently so as not to pull them completely off. Next, he removed the top from a small plastic container and dipped a rag into it. I surmised that he was washing the corn at first, but no....he was actually buttering it. He took great care with each ear and took his time so as to get every bit slathered just right! It was a moment of buttered zen. When he held up the corn, it glistened apart from the dusty Delhi afternoon light. He took the two shiny, buttery ears into the sports shop and came out with money! He then stood for a moment. Meanwhile, there was a woman (pictured below) three stories up in the neighboring apartment complex who had been doing laundry earlier. She caught my eye now because she came to the balcony edge and was starting to lower a blue basket. She hesitated and then pulled it back up a bit. 

I had a flashback to the great movie Rear Window where the women in the upper apartment lowers her dog down to the garden. I also keenly felt kinship with the spectator, Jimmy Stewart, as I was now watching someone on their balcony from across the street! Suddenly, The Corn Man turned and looked up and saw her. He walked over and she lowered the basket. He was definitely expected because the timing was such that the woman was here with her basket in time to catch him! 

The Corn Man didn't call his wares like The Black Olives Vendor down the street or The Rice Cooker on the corner. The Blue Basket Woman enjoyed the heck out of that corn. It was her most favorite food in the world. The Corn Man put back his blanket over the corn, covered the butter and began to slowly roll away.

India Journal - First Two Days

GETTING HERE: Left on Tuesday from New Orleans and FINALLY made it to Delhi late Wednesday night (via flights to Atlanta and Paris and THEN Delhi). It was immediately HOT and HAZY and kind of smelly, but I was so tired that all I could think about was getting settled in my hotel and heading to sleep! It was still 95 degrees F when I arrived at the hotel! I had plenty of time on those lengthy flights, even though I watched four movies, to put together a cheesy video experiment w/ my iMotion app. I'll upload it soon and there will probably be more videos along the way! The internet is weak here so my several tries to upload videos, no matter how short, have failed. I watched four movies on my flights, all of which I'd been wanting to see!

- Hunger Games 2

- Thor: The Dark World

- Divergent

- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

DAY 1 in DELHI

First, here is a link to my Facebook album of photos for the Delhi portion of this trip! I made it "public" and you do NOT have to be signed up for Facebook to be able to view the photos! I hope you will enjoy them. I'm finding India's palette of colors is fascinatingly beautiful!

I am staying in the West Patel Nagar area of Delhi in the Hotel Shanti Palace. It has a ceiling fan and a slow-moving air cooling unit - for which I am VERY GRATEFUL since temps are high. There is free bottled water daily which is awesome. The area is dingy, crowded, busy, impoverished, extremely colorful, and yet somehow touristy. In speaking with a cafe owner today, I learned that they actually have many tourists to this area and have seen all sorts of Westerners so they are somewhat used to it. I also learned that students sometimes have exchange programs on this side of the city for computer technology and software / programming. This neighborhood has a bazillion tailors and dress shops that will make you anything you'd like once you select the fabric. I'm thinking about doing this either here or in Mungeli. While I love seeing the saris, I'm more a fan of the "suit style" sari outfits and hope to bring a couple home with me.

Today, I walked a ton and spent about six hours outside. It's boiling hot so I got appropriately wiped out! I met a nice man cooking rice on the street and frying various things to go with it, played with a cute toddler who was fascinated with my hair, bought some appropriate clothing for visiting temples, ate a crispy gol gappa (type of hollow cornmeal ball filled with a mysterious paste), ate chicken curry, and drank masala chai (tastes exactly like Brasilian mata chai to me, YUM!) I also heard some good live music at a restaurant tonight and got my own song (I'm sure b/c I stick out.) I think it was called 100 miles, but I'm not sure. I'm about to upload pictures from my late afternoon market trip. Check out the colors and the giant pile of beans. I also recorded some of the traffic. Here, if you have a horn or bell, you use it plentifully....all. the. time. Not too shabby for day #1......in fact, I sort of can't believe I did so much on day #1 :-) Tomorrow I'll see some famous sites around Delhi. I will have a taxi driver who will take me to any of the sites I'd like to see.

DAY # 2 Sights Around Delhi

Today, I got to see sights around Delhi and I did the best I could from 9-3, but had to stop b/c of the intense heat. I did see the Houses of Parliament, "embassy rows", The India Gate, Humayan's tomb, The Lotus Temple, and the Indira Gandhi museum and home. That and Humayun's Tomb were my favorites and I wept upon entering the Indira Gandhi museum. What an amazing life she lived as an inspiration and peacemaker. 

                                     

The Lotus Temple is MASSIVE and beautiful. Once you get close to the temple, you must remove your shoes. There is a racket set up to where "officials" give you a little bag to hold your shoes, but then they want you to give the bag to them and then charge a fee when they give them back to you. I put my shoes into my purse instead and luckily, I had brought an extra pair of socks to give me a little more thickness on the hot, spikey mat you have to walk on. It was an interesting and quiet experience. It was so beautiful and the acoustic was insane as the temple was round in the inside and gigantic. I recommend visiting this place, just not in July.

                        

The India Gate

The India Gate is a beautiful archway with a memorial and tomb of the unknown soldier underneath it. The names of 70,000 Indian soldiers who died around the world in WWI. There are also over 12,000 names inscribed in memory of Indian soldiers who died during the Third Afghan War. The grounds around the monument are gorgeous with reflecting pools leading to fountains, sunflowers, and other smaller monuments. On walking back to the taxi, I got lucky with this shot of a bird fluttering up and down from a bush.

                     

Indira Gandhi Museum and Home

This visit was a very moving experience and to see all of the articles about, photos of, and world awards received by Indira Gandhi was both amazing and overwhelming. As you enter, there is a photo of her with words from the last speech she ever gave and I began to cry immediately. She is right you know, we are here today and not guaranteed of tomorrow. How is it then, that we can live and not care or care-and-do-something-about our fellow humans with whom we share this journey? The amount of grace that this woman had from her austere childhood upbringing, constantly having her parents in jail, and seeing her India break under the yoke of disrepair and depair - is God-given grace and is frankly amazing and without reproach. To see the sheer number of world peace and highest distinguished awards from every government you can think of - this is staggering. A trip here is WELL worth it. It has a room whre you can watch a short video of her life and then walk beside her memorial where she was assassinated. They even have the sari she was wearing that day preserved. Another portion of the house is a museum to her son Rajiv who left being a pilot after his brother died to grow into politics and become an extremely famous and influential figure like his mother.

Humayun's tomb

This was a place that I am SO HAPPY to have visited. Before today, I knew nothing about Nasir ud-din Muhammad Humayun (Persian: نصیر الدین محمد همایون; March 7, 1508 AD to January 17, 1556 AD). He was  the second Mughal Emperor who ruled a large territory consisting of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of northern India from (1531-1540) and again from (1555-1556). He had two wives and several children. His ancestors were Sufi and he later became fascinated with their work and the artwork of the Persians. Becoming the Moghul emperor helped immensely in preserving the ancient and different styles of art and stonemasonry that he had seen and grown to love. There are several tombs

I came back to the hotel to rest and cool down. Later, I went for a cappuccino at a local bakery / Indo-Thai takeout place. After that, I took an evening walk and discovered another market. I am getting pretty good at crossing the street (way harder than it sounds). Tomorrow, I will visit Agra and the Taj Mahal. New pics from today were just uploaded into the INDIA 1 album.

The India Gate, Delhi