On Eating (Walk towards the peak - 7)

It is time now to record my experiences on my (another) favourite topic...on food that I had during this tour and eating....

I fondly recollect the Hot Hot soup, Crispy Cutlets & decent Omelettes served at TamilNadu Express...I was blessed with having the first and the third one during the onward journey ...did not know why cutlets did not make rounds....The quality of these items continues to be good inspite of close to 8 years gap from my earlier travel.

At Delhi Station, we were all assembled at the outside of station under a big tree where our 6 buses where parked.....and we were served the typical Delhi Breakfast.....which was basically some thing like Bonda, samosa,couple of variety of Namkeen, an apple, a pear and biscuits.... We were supposed to head to Hrishikesh without any break in journey and were informed that Lunch will be on the way....

We had a bunch of caterers who was joined by another south Indian cook who had travelled from Coimbatore to make his mark with Rasam (almost daily) & sambhar.....When ever the north group were fed up making Dal, this person fed us with his south Indian Sambhar....The food was really good and It became an interesting pass time for me to see the threesome making hot rotis with perfect co-ordination of throwing the Work In progress between themselves...and the monotony and ease with which they made close to 600 roties - twice a day....

The group always managed to travel ahead of us and ensured that they are ready with food when the buses reached them...The only sore point is that during the entire tour our dining was in standing mode only under the trees OR some open space in hotels OR even in road sides....Ofcourse, there was one more sore point.....the sour curd was missing.....during the entire tour....

Food was really good though honestly I got slightly bored in the end at the tour and remained contented with the rasam rice which remained consistently at the same taste.....We were infact restrained from taking food outside and it was only relaxed at Badrinath ...but most of us did not venture out eating...as the food was quite ok...

(On one particular day - which was after our last trekking from Gomuk, I was almost in breaking condition after we reached Gangotri .....The food was served at a hotel which was around 100 metres from my hotel....I decided to take food at a small shop close to my room as I could not gather energy to walk for "100 more" metres......I asked for Roti, Dal and curd at the shop who seeing my head nodding once a while towards him, served me hot rotis - remember I ate 8 rotis one by one....I crawled back to the room after a sumptuous dinner....!!)

The emotional and intense moments are to follow this posting but I need to record my reverence for the smiling and cheerful faces who served us - I even now remember couple of their faces.....Particularly after some tiresome trecking when the whole body was hurting, I really felt as if I am a beggar in front of these wonderful souls....showing up my plate to them for their serving....!!

Some of them could have beeen monotonous....they were only smiling to cheer themselves up....some of the members of group might have been cursing this food arrangements....To me "Anna Dhaadha Sukhi Bhava..." ... though they are paid for it and I have also paid for it.....!! The manner in which they served it with lot of affection is some thing I can never forget......

suchoo