Stopping for Fast Food

Or at least stopping for fast food India style. Early in the trip to India we made a mad dash one morning from New Delhi to Lucknow, which meant getting to the New Delhi domestic airport crazy early for the flight to Lucknow. That in itself probably deserves its own blog post, as the airport was sheer chaos. We were stuck in a line, inexplicably, for so long that the students were starting to freak out as they became convinced that we were going to miss the flight. And then a couple students realized that the only people who weren't agitated were Santosh and me, and they figured that if we were calm then everything was going to be OK. When asked about my relative serenity I simply responded, "If this flight leaves on time it will be the first one in the history of the nation." Needless to say, we caught the flight and made it to Lucknow, but we were also way behind schedule so we had to jump on the bus and head north to Dudhwa (a trip of several hours). The students were starting to get pretty hungry, so I asked Santosh to find someplace for us to pull over to grab a quick bite.  Naturally, I wasn't expected a McDonald's of KFC, although the students would have accepted anything. We pulled over at a little place in the middle of nowhere and had what the students universally declared their favorite meal in India, which was some pickled relish on fresh chapatis. As is always the case with trips like this, they're always defined by the unplanned little moments.

Our friend Santosh told us that this translated out as Family, so to the students it became the Family Restaurant. It's been too many years since I tried to tackle Hindi so I took his word for it.

The kitchen of the Family Restaurant. My good friend Michelle, who traveled with me to India several times in my early days at Champlain, would have been horrified. We used to joke about whether should wear WWMD (What Would Michelle Do?) or WWSD (What Would Scudder Do?) bracelets; the former was way too restrictive and the latter essentially gave no guidance whatsoever.

We dined outdoors, on another beautiful Indian day. March is not a bad time to go to India as the weather is just starting to heat up but is about a month away from being uncomfortable.

We started with some chapati, freshly baked.

This was the key: a relish, which featured pickled mango. Several of the students spent the rest of the trip trying to acquire some to take home.

It seems awfully simple, but it was undeniably delicious, and the students spent the rest of the trip talking about it, and I think every one of them would uniformly say it was their favorite meal.

Charlie after taking the hot pepper challenge; he isn't normally this flushed.

I don't know, Anna, what do you think?

Success! Although in the background John looks unhappy that the latest order of chapati hadn't arrived.