Food

This isn't at all surprising, but the only food really available in India outside of metropolitan places like Delhi is Indian.  For the past week I have lived on a diet consisting almost exclusively of roti and spicy vegetable stews, favoring potatoes, peas and cauliflower.  Snacks have consisted of deep-fried lentil dough balls and various local sweets, to which I prefer the abundant fresh fruit sold by street vendors.  The breakfast fare varies.  Coffee shops tend to serve combinations of lentil-dough balls or donuts and yogurt or spicy vegetable mixtures.  Vishal's (the "office boy" who tends to the guesthouse) idea of breakfast sits better with me.  For a couple of days in a row he brought me plates of cold, but delicious biryani-style rice, which may have been cooked by his mother the night before.  This morning he brought a plate of droopy curry-flavored ramen noodles, which were a welcome alternative to all the spicy vegetable stews I have been eating for lunch and dinner.