City Life

Both today and yesterday I had lunch at local restaurants (yes, eating local food) with members of the development team here. Yesterday a driver took us by car to the restaurant. Today we walked about 4 blocks to get to another.

Driving here, I think I mentioned before, is quite a challenge. Many "middle class" people have cars but don't drive... they have drivers. The driver brings them to the office, drops them off and then often goes back to their home and drives their family places during the day. When one needs to go someplace, like out for lunch, he just calls him up on their cell phone and the driver comes to pick them up. This is a good thing because traffic is every bit as bad as it is in Manhattan but there appear to be fewer road rules. Like Manhattan, cars cannot go so fast but they are constantly changing lanes to avoid crashing into one another or running into pedestrians.

Walking here is much easier. It is not as crowded as I thought it would be but the sights on the streets are very extreme. There are many business people out walking on the streets but for every one of these people there are a hundred others that are out buying or selling food or other goods. There are many street vendors - people that have carried crops from the fields that very morning and now they are set up on the street cooking and serving foods (vegetable mush, fresh squeezed juices, popcorn, nuts and much more) to other locals.

You can also frequently see stray dogs. These don't seem to belong to anyone. They don't seem to be vicious or dangerous but the do appear to be every bit as hungary as the people around them.

Both of the local restaurants that I have been to served a combination of Indian and Chinese dishes. The food was actually much better than the food in the hotel where I am staying (except for the Pad Thai I had here the other night which was EXCELLENT). I allowed my hosts to order only specifying that I wanted to avoid a "lot of spice". Yesterday we had fried rice with sweet and sour chicken and Indian vegetables in gravy. (By the way... Sathian was wrong about me losing weight! The amount of food these fellows it is much more than I am used to eating!) I have to tell you that this was the best fried rice I have ever had and the Sweet & Sour Chicken was NOTHING like what we get in the US. It is served in a bowl... almost like a soup with about 5 different vegetables including red and green peppers, squash, tomato and something else I couldn't identify. The chicken was breaded but the pieces were much smaller, bite-sized slices. And finally the sauce... this is the big difference... only slightly sweet, much thinner, not syrupy. You could literally drink this sauce and it would put a smile on your face. Finally, the Indian vegetables were tender and full of flavor with a gentle cream sauce (gravy) that had a slight cheesy flavor.

I forgot to mention the kabobs... both yesterday and today we had appetizers of chicken kabobs. These seem to be quite popular (Subrata, my companion both days, likes meat very much). The Kabobs are made of strips of white chicken rolled with spices and some kind of breading then skewered and grilled.

Was that an acceptable review of the local food, Jeff?