Indiana State Fair.

Last weekend, my friend Alex drove down here to my new abode in Lafayette, Indiana. Since I'm still relatively new to the Midwest (going to school in Chicagoland does not count, in my opinion), we decided to get a feel for its culture by going to the Indiana State Fair down in Indianapolis, about an hour drive from where I live.

Deep-fried foods being a quintessential element of all state fairs, it was a gluttonous day. We started out with a "pepsi burst", which Alex is seen munching on here. Fried dough balls, coated with cinnamon sugar and doused in a pepsi-based syrup. I was hoping more for a fried ball with carbonated pepsi inside which would gush out when chewed. Oh well.

It is difficult to resist the sight and smell of gigantic turkey legs being roasted on a grill. Despite the legs being as big as my face, it was not difficult for us to finish one off, doused in black pepper and hot sauce.

The culinary highlight of the day was the infamous donut burger, which is exactly what it sounds like. A grilled beef patty, with melted cheese, onions and pickles, between two Krispy Kremes. The prospect of clogging my arteries with the thing terrified me until I ate it. It was an interesting blend of sweet and savory, and tasted oddly like a Big Mac. Not something that I'd do every day, but I certainly enjoyed the novelty of it.

And then there was the hot beef sundae, which I had been meaning to try since seeing it at the Tennessee State Fair a few years ago. It was delicious, but not quite as cool as it sounds, being a normal concoction of mashed potatoes over chunks of beef, topped with corn and gravy.

The most hilarious moment of the fair was when we discovered a machine called VibraBody Slim, meant to shake your fat off with varying speeds of vibrations. When you turn it on, the platform on which you stand begins to shake back and forth, and your entire body begins to jiggle - a sight that had me doubled over in laughter for a good ten minutes. Speeds increase all the way up to level 30, at which point my vision blurred and I became quite nauseous, and could feel my brain vibrating within my skull. We revisited the machines at the end of the day, and discovered that 3 out of their 5 display models had been sold. Oh, oh, Indiana.

The rest of the time, we just strolled around, enjoying the sight of carnival rides, tractors as big as houses, smaller farm vehicles from the '60s and '70s, hogs, goats, draft horses, blacksmith demonstrations, smoke-emitting wood-chopping machines, and many other things that I find charming about rural America.

This thing cost as much as my parents' house!

A word about these pictures: I no longer own a digital camera, having ruined my previous one with an unfortunate water spill. However, my dad gave me his old Canon EOS Elan II, a 35mm SLR camera made in the late '90s. Having never used a film camera before, it was a challenge to fiddle with settings without being able to immediately see the results, and to be limited to just 36 pictures for the entire day. However, I'm largely happy with how they turned out, and I think the grainy quality almost highlights the rustic feel of the all-American Midwest.

There are some instances when I feel that advanced digital cameras are almost too perfect in how they capture reality, whereas slight imperfections can give an image a quality of dreaminess, which I'm drawn to. I'd really like to use this Canon as a base for learning more about film photography.

End tangent. The weekend was a good one. I'm settling into Indiana just fine.

Guangzhou with friends.

My journey from Hong Kong to Guangzhou was a stressful one.

I have a friend in Guangzhou who lives more than an hour away from the city center. The plan was to get on a bus to the downtown, and then make several additional bus connections from there. The problem was, right before the bus got into Guangzhou, it started storming severely. By the time I arrived, half of downtown was flooded. I had to walk in the torrential downpour with my huge pack looking for a way to get on the bus connections, which involved wading through knee-deep water, only to realize that no bus was stopping to pick up passengers because of the flooding.

So there I was with nowhere to go, no way to get to my friend, no hotel to stay in, and un-navigable streets, with all my luggage in tow. It was probably the most alone I've ever felt in my life.

Then as I was standing on the street, a stranger approached me and asked me if I need a hotel room, and realizing that I really had no other option, I reluctantly agreed. A subway and rickshaw ride later, we arrived at this dreary place, where the receptionist guy hit on me, my room had no windows, and every time I wanted to get in my room, I had to ask the receptionist to open it for me because I didn't get my own key. The fact that everything I owned was wet and I couldn't make any outgoing phone calls didn't help my mentality. I pushed my dresser against the door and went to sleep in a nervous state.

It was a lesson learned the hard way: never go to an unfamiliar place without knowing exactly where you're staying and how to get there, and for the love of god, invest in a waterproof pack cover.

The day after, things looked way up when I left that hotel in a hurry and finally met my Polish friend Janusz. He and I met in India, and after having said goodbye there with only a meager hope of meeting again, I was very excited to see him again so soon. We spent a lot of time reminiscing about the past year - the parties and the people and all the sensations of living abroad.

Guangzhou is an industrial city, and by definition, drab. There isn't much here except a marginally pretty river front and some great food. Janusz introduced me to some of his Chinese friends living just outside the city on an enormous college campus of - get this - 300,000 students! Ten schools joined onto one campus, with all the amenities and provisions any student would ever need - shopping, food markets, a small lake, bars. Not surprisingly, these young people rarely step foot into Guangzhou proper.

New friends and Janusz on the right.

For two nights, I slept in a female dorm, which was an experience in itself. Four people in a cramped room on wooden beds lofted above desks, no air conditioner in the heat of summer, no laundry facilities, and ravenous mosquitoes. Looking out from their balcony at the rows upon rows of adjacent dorm buildings made me think about how much privacy is a western concept and space is such a rare luxury.

After a few days with hospitable Janusz and friends mostly around the campus, I said goodbye again and boarded a sleeper bus for the riverside town of Yangshuo.

Eats, and a friend.

The explorations did not end when Matt and I arrived back to Delhi on our trip, but this time, they were all of food.

On Matt’s last day in town, we went to Delhi’s Khan Market, one of my favorite places in the city. First, I introduced Matt to the unbelievable mutton kakori rolls at Aap Ki Kathir, a hole-in-the wall kebab shop that I’d been dying to revisit for months. The mutton has a smooth, soft texture, particular to the kakori style of preparation, and the taste of cinnamon and cloves and other spices is incredibly bold.

Before leaving Khan Market, we picked up an assortment of off-the-wall fruits, and tried them later that night.

Gooseberries: taste and texture like a tart cherry tomato


Cherimoya: exceedingly sweet, juicy, soft white flesh, inside a cushy inedible shell


Dragonfruit: surprisingly bland, sort of like a tasteless kiwi, but gorgeous exterior


And finally, for the piece de resistance, Matt and I devoured an entire leg of tandoor-roasted lamb that night at one of Delhi’s well-known restaurants, Punjabi by Nature. The dish came out still sizzling, bone still in and meat shredded around it. It was perfectly marinated and honestly the most tender, flavorful lamb I’ve ever had. We paired it with oversized portions of garlic naan, dabbled it with mint chutney, and washed it down with rarely found Hoegaarden. That was a meal I’ll remember for a long time.


And then I reluctantly sent him off at the airport for his next destination of Hong Kong.

Good travels, good food, and a good friend. There are many things to be happy about.

Ukrainian food coma.

Last weekend, I helped cook a huge traditional Ukraininan dinner with my friends Iryna and Ayuko. In those two hours in the kitchen, Ayuko and I were sous-chefs, and Iryna brought it all together.

Iryna in middle, Ayuko on her left

I loved getting my hands dirty again in the kitchen.


The vat of gorgeous borscht. Beets, cabbage, potatoes, kidney beans. Perfect on these chilly Delhi nights.


The tabouli stuffing was made with tomatoes, dill, parsley, feta. Wrapped with Lebanese bread, and slightly fried on the bottom til brown and crispy.


We fried eggplant strips with a healthy dose of salt, and wrapped them around the tabouli stuffing.


Great success! I'm definitely saving the recipe. Borscht doesn't get more authentic than a bona fide mom-recipe.

Jungle safaris in Corbett.

Jackals and sambar and elephants, oh my! Last weekend, ten of us took the 7-hour drive to Corbett National Park for 3 days and 2 nights amidst the forest and wildlife.

[Photos credited to my friend Manish, our designated photographer for the weekend.]

Corbett is primarily a tiger sanctuary, with 160 wild Bengal tigers roaming around in its huge premises. The reserve spans over 200 square miles, with only several small sections that are open for visitors.

Gaining entry into the place was extremely difficult. We booked our entry tickets a full month ago -- very unusual considering most of my travel plans here are decided days before -- and even then, our Indian friend Manish had to use his connections to get us in. Corbett was extremely well-operated, with a distinct lack of irresponsible tourists and an apparent sensitivity to preserving the objectives of the wildlife sanctuary. The base camp where we stayed our second night was even solar-powered.

We arrived Saturday morning at 5:30am. Ill-prepared for the freezing morning air, we wrapped ourselves in all the clothes we packed and promptly set out on our first safari. By the time we reached the gates of the park, the sun was just rising.

The beauty of the jungle was staggering. I've been so far removed from nature for the past three months living in Delhi that the sight of lush landscape had me continually on the verge of tears.

Within the first hour, we spotted black storks, loads of spotted deer, barking deer, langur monkeys, and gigantic white-ant mounds.


There were also many sambar (similar to elk), and I had a brief sighting of a peacock.


Our knowledgable driver helped us spot and track the many tiger footprints around the road, but we had no sightings.

More successful was our quest for wild elephants; we spotted two wild ones by the end of the day, whacking their trunks loudly through the bush.


We spent the rest of the day on a light hike to and around the Corbett waterfall, a scenic little stop tucked away in a forest cover on the outskirts of the town.


Back at our guest house outside the park, we had a hearty dinner of chicken masala, butter chicken, paneer something-or-other, and chana pindi -- followed by stories and laughs around a bonfire.

Sunday morning started at 4:30am, once again to frigid temperatures. Destination: Dhikala, the core section of Corbett, located deep inside the jungle. It was almost an hour drive just to the gates. Once we got there, it was an additional 2-hour winding, bumpy drive through the jungle to reach our base camp.

Along the way, we stopped to look at crocodiles and continued to keep our eyes peeled for any sign of tigers.


This weekend, I had no less than four food comas, largely attributable to the buffet meals at our Dhikala camp.


Safari number three brought us enticingly close to tigers. There were footprints everywhere. There were three sightings the previous day, so we parked our jeep in the locations of those sightings and waited breathlessly for a glimpse of stripes. There was one area of road that a tigress and her two cubs frequented, according to our guides, but we were unlucky. I wasn't expecting any sightings this weekend, but to know that they were so close was exhilarating.

Before heading back to the camp, we stopped by a rickety old watchtower, where we took in the stunning view, observed a herd of eleven wild elephants from afar, and ate some bhel puri.

Dinnertime was a gluttonous event. I went back for round after round. Back at our 12-person bungalow, sleep was instant.


Early Sunday morning, I and three others headed out for an elephant trek, while the rest continued with another jeep safari.


Rather than keep to a trail, our guide let our elephant wander where it pleased, which involved a lot of bushwacking and tramping through thick underbrush. The plains where we roamed had an incredibly diverse range of flora. The plants around us changed every five minutes.


We spotted a jackal (it's tiny and hard to see compared to the sambar in the picture).


Today, it happened. We heard a tiger roar. Fine, it could have been a leopard or jungle cat, but it was undeniably the roar of a wild cat. I fancy that it was a tiger, having tired somewhat of having seeing just tracks so far and nothing else. The sound seemed like it was right behind us, but we quickly realized that the source was probably farther away, given the loudness of the roar and the silence of our surroundings.

Food coma number three later, we were on the road back into town. Final destination: back to Delhi.

But the weekend wasn't quite over. Just before reaching home, Manish surprised us all by taking us instead to his parents home in northwest Delhi, where they had prepared for us a full home-cooked Indian meal.


I was excited beyond words. We had fried fish stuffed with a coriander paste, boiled eggs in masala gravy, fingerling potatoes sprinkled with mustard seeds, spicy prawns, vegetable pulao, raita and fresh salad with a home-made chutney, and gulab jamun for dessert. This was food coma number four, and it ended our trip in the most satisfying way possible.


It was an indescribable feeling to be back in nature again. I felt like I had been holding my breath for three months and could finally let it out.

Pictures up on Manish's facebook.