Karnataka 2nd View

All Pretty On The Western Front

The length of the Karnataka coast and comes away breathless.

Apart from the wonderful Udupi food and the marvellous array of seafood that the western coast of India is known for, there is another kind of culinary offering—one that had escaped my notice till I actually landed there. It mystified me at first. If an ice cream proclaimed itself to be Gadbad Ice Cream, what might it do to my insides? With a six-day trip ahead of me, I let it go in Mangalore (regret!), eyed it again on Kaup beach and then gave in to sample it in Karwar.

This is a vertical sundae, a concoction invented in Mangalore. In a tall glass, they lay a bed of fruit salad, pile up three scoops of ice cream in any flavours you fancy, sprinkle it with dry fruits and tutti-frutti and, to finish up, pour some honey and vividly coloured syrup all around. A bit of everything. It occurred as I was eating it that it wasn’t a half-bad description of my own jaunt up the coast of Karnataka. With Mangalore at the base, a dollop each of Udupi, Murudeshwara and Gokarna, garnished with beaches and temples, flavoured everywhere with the salt of sea breeze. It was very gadbad.

Mangalore was full of contrasts. It wears the look of a blasé city but a scratch or two reveals the town—and its history. First we decided to pay obeisance to Goddess Mangala Devi, who gives the city its name. An old temple (some say ninth, some say tenth century) still half-wearing its Dussehra finery—festivities this temple is famous for. Then a visit to Lord Kadri Manjunatha was called for. This is an eleventh-century temple built over in several layers. On the side, through the slats in the window, I peeped at a truly magnificent bronze idol of Trilokeswara. Should it be in a museum, lit and well displayed, or better thus, viewed through a narrow aperture, preserving a quaint mystery and installed in a consecrated space?

The sun dipped and we headed to the shores at Panambur beach, where the Mangalore Port is located. Children squealed in delight, young men thundered up and down the sand on hired ponies, and gaggles of girls dunked each other in the water. I bought myself a cone of bhel puri and saw the sun off.

The next day was devoted to the temple town of Udupi, the history and lore of which are steeped with references to Madhvacharya, the thirteenth-century philosopher-saint who propounded the Dvaita school of Indian philosophy. This was hallowed turf for me; a veritable Mecca for the community I hail from, and I’d never been. So basking under what I hoped was the benign approval of now-deceased grandparents, I went.

Mangalore turned out to be a city of contrasts

Car Street Road is where it’s all at. In a close cluster—amidst a bustling market selling everything from flowers to cool drinks, puja essentials to curios—the temples. The ancient Chandramouleswara and the Anantheswara temples are traditionally understood to have first dibs on your attention—you must visit these before you visit the main Krishna temple. There are stories and legends told about everything, and there is the curious case of the west-facing idol. The story goes that the poet-saint Kanaka Dasa was not allowed entry into the shrine by the upper-class priests and so stood outside singing songs of praise. Pleased with his devotion, Krishna turned west to face him even as the wall developed a crack. So darshan here is sought through a small window called Kanakana kindi. A rather splendid view it is too: a small idol adorned with a vajra kavacha, armour studded with diamonds. Around the temples stand the eight muttas—temple administrative systems, if you will—that take care of the Krishna temple in turn. The whole street is redolent with a culture that is now shrinking.

Free lunch is offered at the temple and I found my way to the large dining room at lunch time. Long rows of people seated on the floor for a lovely meal of rice, chutney, sambhar, saaru and buttermilk. A massive container of rice came pushed in a trolley, huge vats of liquid carried up and down the line by two men, efficiently dispensing the broth. “Yellinda ma neevu?” I got asked again and again, “Where are you from?” The curiosity deepened to friendliness every time I responded in Kannada. My neighbours guided me through the meal, assuring me there was saaru to come when I wondered how to allocate my rice, and graciously took their leave as I still lingered over my plate.

The temples visited, we headed to the sea at Malpe beach. At the entrance, a large statue of Mahatma Gandhi loomed on the horizon. In the afternoon light, the Mahatma looked forlorn—but no doubt I was letting my own pessimism about the state of the nation carry me away. Sufficient numbers of enthusiastic locals gambolled in the water but we left them to take a ferry six kilometres across to St Mary’s Island, one of four small uninhabited islands that are geologically very significant. Huge columns of basaltic lava are strewn across the island and are stunning indeed. Vasco da Gama is supposed to have stopped here on his way from Portugal to Kozhikode and given it its name.

Back at Malpe, I called for a chai and a fortifying sandwich, and we also made time for one other stop—the extremely beautiful Kaup beach. I don’t know if the beach coloured the mood or if it was the mood that enriched the beach—but it seems now to be painted in my memories with hues of gold, blue and purple. There is a noble lighthouse here that was built in 1901 and it carries layers of memory. On the rocks, young people sat quietly appreciative, talking in low tones and walked down the rough stairs before it became too dark to see.

We were doing a longish haul the following day and heading all the way to Murudeshwara, 165 kilometres from Mangalore. The erstwhile NH-17 is now called NH-66—not quite the legend its American counterpart is but an interesting enough road. The highway goes from Kochi to Mumbai and serves the entire coast of Karnataka. Scenic for the most part…dotted by a series of bridges over canals formed by the backwaters, lined with coconut trees, paddy fields and broad-leaved sal. The road does not, for the most part, hug the coast—although the tang of the sea is never far away.

The beach isn’t the cleanest by any means—but it’s atmospheric

But a little beyond halfway, suddenly the blue comes into view and you know you’re in the very beautiful Maravanthe stretch. We stopped for lunch at a resort here, which gave us the advantages of open views of the water as well as a thatched roof over our heads. A little further, fisherfolk busied themselves with their nets, their colourful boats lined up high on the sand. I was squinting in the hot afternoon sun, feeling a little sorry that we hadn’t come upon this peaceful spot when it was a bit cooler. But that was only till I hitched up my trousers and let the waves come to me, caressing as they retreated. The sea has that quality, I find, of altering your perspective. It was no longer too hot, and with thousands of crabs milling about their hidey holes and sandpipers roosting in the rocks, it was absolutely the perfect time to be in Maravanthe.

Along the road, we came upon a dramatic picture frame—winding her way in languorous bends, the Souparnika river. An auspicious river that supposedly absorbs the goodness of sixty-four medicinal plants and herbs as it flows—a dip in these waters, therefore, is believed to be marvellously curative. I remember my mother insisting that her skin turned a beautiful golden when she bathed in the Souparnika…but there was no easy access to the water at this point and I regretfully gave up the idea of bringing home one bottle of its magic. 

Soon we were at the bustling temple town of Murudeshwara. Dozens of buses at the local bus stop, taxi stands in the narrow main street, shops, tourists, eateries, lodges. The beach isn’t the cleanest by any means—the tourists keep to one side and the fisherfolk occupy the other. However, there are two features that tower over the town—one, the twenty-storeyed raja gopuram to the Murudeshwara temple, about 237 feet tall that needs you to crane your neck all the way if you’re standing at the entrance; and two, a 123-foot sculpture of Shiva that dominates the landscape from miles away. The Murudeshwara shrine itself is old, linked to the convoluted legend of Ravana and the atma linga, but the temple has been constructed over the past decades through the efforts of local businessman and philanthropist R.N. Shetty; the sculpture, one of the tallest in India, is his vision as well.

There is a wonderful opportunity for underwater adventure at Murudeshwara. The lovely dive site of Netrani is twenty kilometres off the coast from here—and the lure was irresistible. The next morning saw us chugging along in the motor boat listening to a basic primer on scuba diving. The coral island of Netrani is a beautiful spot with a visibility of fifteen to twenty metres and I was excited. Soon I was kitted out with the cylinder fastened to my back and I learned to my dismay that I was expected to fall into the water with a back flip—oddly enough, the aspect that scared me the most. Still, that was accomplished without a hiccup, and my instructor and I descended slowly. It didn’t seem so drastically different from snorkelling at first but the pressure started building in my ears and I knew I was definitely under water. We went down to about twelve metres. Vast schools of fish, fascinatingly coloured, marine life along the floor, corals, anemone… I saw other divers, hand-signalled okay for the underwater cameras and looked about avidly. A mere half-hour in a completely different element. I loved it but it did make me appreciate air and the fact that I was designed for it.

We moved up north to Gokarna next, which seemed to be the point where, culturally, Karnataka melded into Goa. The beach shacks were more geared to the European palate, the beach shops had an eye firmly on the foreign-tourist market. We stayed at an interesting little place called Namaste Yoga Farm, which is run by German Oliver Miguel. My cottage had a gorgeous yoga deck framed by orange curtains and I succumbed at once to the temptation of twelve rounds of surya namaskars.

The beaches here are beautiful: Om, with its undulating shape, and Kudle, so popular with the foreign tourists. Perhaps the name bestows a certain quietude to those who visit Om, because towards evening even the gambollers sauntered over to the rocks and fell to quiet meditation. Journey’s end but I fear it’s given me a taste for the sea that my land city will struggle to assuage.

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The Information

The coast of Karnataka is just short of 300km in length and offers some truly fine beaches.

Where to stay

• Mangalore Among the plusher options, the Ocean Pearl in Kodialbail is a good choice (from Rs 4,400, doubles; 0824-2413800, theoceanpearl.in). The Saffron is also centrally located and offers decent mid-range accommodation (from Rs 2,999, doubles; 4255542,thesaffron.in).
• Udupi For a beachy experience you couldn’t do better than the Paradise Isle Beach Resort (from Rs 1,500, doubles; 0820-2538777, theparadiseisle.com) on Malpe beach. In the town, try Hotel Udupi Residency (from Rs 700, doubles; 2530005,udupiresidency.com), near the bus stand.
• Maravanthe Turtle Bay (from Rs 3,000, doubles; 9611000777, turtlebayeco.com) is the best place from which to enjoy this gorgeous rock-strewn beach.
• Murudeshwara The RNS Residency (from Rs 2,000, doubles; 08385-268901,naveenhotels.com) is your best bet and offers excellent vegetarian fare. Its sister concernNaveen Beach Resort (from Rs 2,000, doubles; 260415) is right on the beach. It has a bar and is known for its seafood specialities.
• Gokarna Om Beach Resort (from Rs 3,000, per person; 080-40554055,karnatakatourism.org) is a well-appointed establishment. On a hillock abutting Kudle beach, is the tranquil Namaste Yoga Farm (from Rs 2,800, doubles; 9739600407,spiritualland.com), which encourages you to stay a minimum of seven days (but you get yoga and meditation classes thrown in).

What to see & do

Mangalore

• There are various temples and churches in Mangalore that vie for your attention but you shouldn’t miss the Mangaladevi shrine, the Kadri Manjunath temple and theMilagres church (milagreschurchmangalore.com).
• Among the beaches, there is the Panambur beach by the Mangalore port andTannirbavi, 12km from the city. To the south there is Ullal, and to the north, the sands of Surathkal.
• Top Tip Along Karnataka’s coast you must try the famous Gadbad Ice Cream. While it is offered on practically every beach and market place, the best place to eat it is the eatery where it was invented: at Ideal’s parlour (idealicecream.in), on Market Road, Mangalore.

Udupi

• The temple town of Udupi is a cultural delight. You will, of course, visit the Krishna temple (udipikrishnamutt.com) as well as the Chandramouleswara and Anantehwara temples.
• Try and grab an authentic Udupi meal at the 50-year-old Mitra Samaja in the temple complex.
• Kaup beach is a beautiful stretch with a picturesque, century-old lighthouse.
• Excellent Malpe beach is also the gateway to St Mary’s Island (Rs 150/round-trip), which boasts amazing basalt rock formations.

Maravanthe

• Nothing much but the beach and fisher village of Kanchugodu. Kundapura town offers a clutch of historical temples including the Anegudde Sri Vinayaka temple and the Mookambika Devi shrine.

Murudeshwara

• The Murudeshwara temple (murudeshwar.org) is a must-visit and the giant statue of Shiva is well worth a gawk. The statue has a temple under it as well.
• In the sculputure complex, set aside 15 minutes for a delightful museum calledBhookailasa (Rs 10, entry: 7am–1pm, 3–8pm), which tells the story of Ravana and theatma linga that forms the backdrop to the town’s mythology. A superbly muscular Ravana, a voluptuous Mandodari...imagine your favourite Amar Chitra Katha come alive in three dimensions.
• The diving at Netrani island (20km off Murudeshwara) is superb and starts at Rs 4,500 for a basic Discover Scuba Diving programme. Inquire with Dreamz Diving (dreamzdiving.com) or Dive Goa (divegoa.com).

Gokarna

• The Kudle and Om beaches are both excellent with their own distinct characters. Kudle has a number of shacks that offer a range of cuisines—Indian, Continental, Lebanese, Middle-eastern and it’s quite the done thing to order a beer and stare at the water.
• In the town, the Mahabaleshwar temple is one of the pancha kshetras or five places of Shiva in this region. The Maha Ganapati temple is just metres away.

Off Season: Spain's 2nd View

Game Theory

Go to Spain for the football. Especially when the footfalls are low

I’m sitting in the Turkish Airlines box in the Camp Nou, Europe’s largest football stadium, watching FC Barcelona take on Celtic FC in the group stage of the world’s greatest football competition, the UEFA Champions League. In the adjoining box, sits a visibly pregnant and elated pop singer Shakira; she’s doing a different kind of a belly-dance for the amusement of her friends. And I’m undergoing deep thoughts over the direction of the sport.

Time was when the consumption of football was a beer-fuelled, lower-class, male dominion. But that was before the television-sponsored gentrification of the sport. Now we have wine-sipping self-proclaimed aesthetes discussing match of the day with their girlfriends. TV football shows have women anchors deliberating the merits of deploying a double pivot in a 4-2-3-1 system. Football, like Sufism, has made a class shift. The players still come from the underclasses but the consumers have greater purchasing power.

The vanguard of this telly-friendly football is FC Barcelona (Barça) and—by extension—the Spanish national team that has won two Euro Cups and a World Cup. Its pretty passing of the football in mystifying geometrical puzzles, called Tiki-Taka, has defeated countless oppositions and won over the world in the deal. They have brought back a good taste in the sport not seen since the 1982 Brazil side. They are debating whether this Barça squad is the greatest team ever assembled on a football pitch. By the time this magazine reaches its consumers, it is most likely that Lionel Messi of Barcelona has received FIFA’s player of the year award after a ridiculously munificent year of 90-odd goals.
This is the golden age of goalscoring; consequently, this is the dark era of the defender. FIFA has changed rules to accommodate smaller players, and the belligerent defender is more often seen leaving the stadium, with referees all too willing to flash the yellow and red offence cards. Which explains why Gerard Pique, Barça’s injured centre-back better known as Shakira’s boyfriend, is sitting in a tony box high up in the stands, instead of plying his trade against the tibia and fibula of a Celtic forward. This is the age of Barça.
Celtic, though, draw first blood tonight through a header following a powerful leap. Andrés Iniesta equalises before half time with a typically beautiful Barça goal after some intricately beautiful passing between Messi and Xavi. I’m sipping cava (Catalonian sparkling wine) in sponsored luxury, reconciled to a draw when Jordi Alba produces a bit of magic in injury time and wins the game for Barça. The game is over, and I have five days in hand.
Indian tourists have begun to flock to Spain after Zoya Akhtar’s 2011 film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. But this is the onset of winter and the summer fiestas made famous in India by the film—La Tomatina, the Bull Run in Pamplona—are not on offer. What if you have run out of the joys of Barcelona?

Nobody knows how old the charming city of Tarragona is, but it used to be a major Roman port

There is Tarragona. About eighty kilometres south of Barcelona, it is a small city with layers and layers of charm. Nobody knows how old this city is, but it was a major Roman port and administrative town. It’s like travelling across time, all the while stopping at small cafés and pubs for a coffee or a drink or tapas. The Mediterranean city with a great location and several centuries living side by side in narrow lanes is a familiar story, but Tarragona is definitely the real deal; Unesco has just designated it a World Heritage Site.
The cuisine here is heavy on seafood and wine, and we sample the fare of several restaurants, beginning in the old fishermen’s district of El Serallo. The tapas include fish rolls, called croqueta, which is also the name for Andrés Iniesta’s signature football move as he casually rolls past beefy defenders. The Roman ruins are as impressive as Roman ruins are impressive anywhere else.
Our second day in Tarragona is excursive, and we visit the Poblet monastery about a hundred kilometres into the nearby hills. It’s raining and winter is knocking at the doorstep. At the imposing monastery we get up close and personal with the hard lives of monks in medieval times. Our guide points out, repeatedly, that the only source of central heating was the wine the monastery produced.

This is some serious wine country (Spain produces more wine now than France). We move on to the Falset Castle which has been converted to a wine museum that is a must see for any wine enthusiast. I find myself drawn into the exhibits that coach you about smell and flavour by actual smells. It’s a fine experience, and it’s a pity I’m one for the brews, not quite an area of Spanish excellence. So I make up by buying some Chartreuse, an aniseed-based spirit also produced by monks. I sip it and the fumes are good for the promise of 55% alcohol on the label. I begin to admire Christianity.
The island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean, though, is for, by and of the heathens. The architecture in many parts is still Phoenician and the music is out of this world. We go to Pacha, the hottest disco in the world, only to realise that we are one week too late. The winter has set in, and the wild partygoers have fled.
So we go to Café del Mar on the western edge of Ibiza, famous for its sunsets and its music. Clouds deny us the photo-op, but the music is as great as the cocktails, and we head out to the best seafood meal I have had at a family-run restaurant in an old part of the town, where we sit next to a small well tucked into a wall inside the house.

This is not the Ibiza you will read about in the tourist brochures. It is a quiet delight, with solitary churches and forts inside which people still live (like Jaisalmer). We go to the Sa Cova vineyard in the island’s centre, for a session of wine-tasting. The November chill is on its way, and I’m fortifying myself with several tapas and wines. I think I have developed a taste for wine, just like I developed a taste for Tiki-Taka, the fine passing game of FC Barcelona.

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The Information
'Getting There
I took the shortest flight to Barcelona via Istanbul with the excellent Turkish Airlines (turkishairlines.com).
Tarragona is well connected by road and rail with Barcelona. Take the Catalunya Expressfrom the Sants Station in Barcelona to Tarragona; it takes a little more than an hour and costs € 7. Renfe Operadora (renfe.com), a state-owned company, operates the trains. There are buses from Tarragona to Poblet and Falset.
Ibiza is well connected to the European mainland by air and by ferries, though the frequency drops in the off-season. Try Iberian among the low-cost airlines (iberia.com). Ferries take about eight hours and three companies offer services for about € 80: Balearia (baleria.com), Iscomar and Transmediterranea.
Within the island of Tarragona, places can be quite far apart. It’s best to rent a car or a scooter, as taxis are not easy to come by, especially if you are going away from downtown areas. Your one-stop-shop to plan your Ibiza stay and travel is the website of the Island’s government,ibiza.travel.

Where to stay
In Tarragona we stayed at the Astari Hotel (hotelastari.com), which is a short walk from everywhere in the city. The main shopping area, the Rambla Nova, is close by, as is the historical Roman district. It overlooks the Mediterranean and the sunrise is quite breathtaking as the beach is a five-minute walk. In Ibiza we stayed in the five-star ‘ecoluxury’ spa-hotel Aguas de Ibiza (aguasdeibiza.com). It is located on the island’s eastern side, with a view of the Med.

Where to eat
Tarragona has several excellent restaurants, but the Restaurant Arcs (restaurantarcs.com) is highly recommended for its food, its animated chef and waiter, its cosy décor and quaint location in the old town. Tarragona’s El Serallo district has lots of restaurants serving seafood. In Falset, Hostal Sport (hotelpriorat-hostalsport.com) serves some of the best Catalonian cuisine you are likely to find. If you are looking to get away for a while in a beautiful and quiet part of the world, with wonderful local food and culture thrown into it, Hostal Sport is the place for you.
The best food of the journey I had was at the Es Rebost de Can Prats (esrebostdecanprats.com), a small family-run restaurant in Ibiza’s San Antonio neighbourhood. The Café del Mar (cafedelmarmusic.com) is an institution of Ibiza, as much for the music as thecocktails and the wonderful sunsets. The Sa Cova vineyard (see ibiza.travel) is open all through the year.

Haryana's View

Lost & Found

Haryana is a goldmine of our built heritage. We stumble upon a few gems but can’t help wishing they were better looked after.

I have always fantasised about dancing in a mustard field, my brightly coloured, swirling lehenga set off by the impossibly yellow banks of flowers swaying gently all around. But I could never have dreamt up the form that my mustard-field fantasy has just taken. For here we are, driving through interminable swatches of mustard; bumping over mud-packed bunds between fields; climbing up and down sandbanks to cross unsupervised railway tracks; negotiating small clearings packed with the inevitable buffaloes and stacks of drying dung. Ehsaan jokes that we won’t lack for sarson-ka-saag if our car stalls in an irrigation channel after nightfall. His driving skills eventually put us back on the highway some distance past the reason for our detour: a roadblock created by irate local residents demanding exemptions from toll payments on State Highway 15A, just west of Farrukhnagar. Even as I mentally recalibrate my mustard-field sequence to include a James-Bond-style car chase, I scan the early-December sky anxiously. Sunset will soon force an abrupt end to our day’s rambles around lesser-known monuments in three Haryana districts close to the National Capital Territory of Delhi—Jhajjar, Gurgaon and Mewat. The drive from Jhajjar to Farrukhnagar, which should have taken about half an hour, has taken us two-and-a-half hours.

The day begins many hours earlier, with our first stop just across the Delhi border, at Bahadurgarh, in Jhajjar district, Haryana. Here, we have to weave through carts full of farm produce to get to our destination—a late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century fort gateway. The gate is plastered with political and commercial posters, and there’s a flourishing Ayurvedic/Unani pharmacy in the guard and drum rooms. Unfortunately, this badly maintained gate is virtually the only remnant of the tiny, sixty-square-kilometre ‘princely state’ that existed here until the last nawab, Bahadur Jang Khan, was exiled to Lahore for not helping the British forces in 1857.
Disappointed, we get back on the highway. We drive past a surprising number of large, full and well-maintained village taalabs until we hit the first open playing field that was clearly once an artificial lake, too. There’s an interesting late-Mughal baoli here, and a rare, medieval stone Shiva temple. We stop to admire these unexpected delights, and get drawn into the pretty, prosperous little Jat village, Dulehra, that sits beyond them. Clean, quiet streets are flanked by beautiful doorways; women and old men (almost all called Deshwal) sit in separate groups on string cots in sunlit clearings, the men smoking from long hookahs. But Dulehra is in a time capsule that is perhaps soon to explode: already, the village is empty in the late morning because all the young people are away working in Delhi or Gurgaon, and a major highway link will soon bring big-city life even closer.
We don’t have to look very hard for our next destination: a spectacular set of tombs, all built between 1594 and 1630, with seven of them still standing, is clearly visible from the main road into Jhajjar. They are all built of limestone rubble, and have sandstone facings with copious inscriptions and beautiful carved and sgraffito detailing that are still intact at several places. Even though the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has economised by stretching strings of barbed wire where the gate should be (to keep buffaloes out, we are told), the structures are surprisingly well maintained, surrounded by clean and well-trimmed lawns. This is all the more remarkable because there’s only one person, Pawan Kumar of the Horticultural Branch of the ASI, minding the entire complex, multi-tasking as gardener, cleaner and guide. He tells us the legend behind the main ‘Bua Hassan’ tomb, slipping in the fact that parts of Lagaan were shot here. When the doomed love affair between an aristocratic woman known today only as ‘bua’ and a woodcutter, Hassan, ended with his death in battle, the heartbroken bua built her lover a large, beautiful tomb that she was also buried in, after she died pining for him on the banks of the taalab nearby a couple of years later.

It is now time for lunch, and we repair to the simply-named Shuddh Bhojanalaya dhaba across the road, before getting back on the road to Dujana, which was abandoned by its small-time nawab in 1947, when he and his family fled to Pakistan under pressure from other local residents and incoming refugees. Dujana has some interesting British-era institutional structures built by this last nawab—Mohammad Iqtidar Ali Khan—as well as a ruined palace that still has traces of Italian tiling and sculptural detail. There’s also a courthouse and prison (now a private house—the owners bought it at a government auction in the early 1950s), an old house with a mysterious grave in the basement that is now being demolished and a mosque that has recently been whitewashed and, unfortunately, enclosed in ugly aluminium jaalis. We then wander around the abandoned police station and into what we are told was the safe room for weapons, only to find that we have disturbed a troop of monkeys in the process. They block the doorway, hissing and spitting until our desperate cries eventually bring help. We make plans to flee, still shaking, when a passing maulvi directs us to Dujana’s best-kept secret—the Safed Masjid and the dargah of the fakir Durjan Shah, after whom the town is named. The crumbling, forgotten masjid is kept bravely alive by a small group of loving caretakers, and we slowly calm down in its peaceful environs.
Eventually, we drive out of Dujana, stopping at yet another quaint, abandoned baoli—this one ringed by miniature minars, and now being used to stack buffalo-dung pats and hay. As we discover, this is also the site of a major, twice-yearly, buffalo mandi that we have to negotiate as we get back on the highway. Some distance out of town on the Rewari road, we stop at Gurukul, a privately run ashram—and the unlikely site of the Haryana government’s most major collection of coinage and artefacts from the River-Valley period onwards.
And then we are back on the road, headed southeast to Farrukhnagar, via the mustard-field interlude. At the entrance to the little town, there is a standalone, domed structure called Sethani ki Chhatri that has the most amazing frescoes on its ceiling—various episodes from Krishna’s life, Vishnu’s avatars, plus scenes from everyday and court life that emphasise women’s roles. There’s one scene of women at a well giving drinking water to passing soldiers, and another of a soldier climbing up a balcony for a clandestine rendezvous with a noblewoman. The chhatri, perhaps built by a rich merchant to mourn a beloved wife, is a forgotten jewel in serious danger of soon vanishing through neglect.

We then enter the town through Jhajjar gate, and stop immediately at a very unusual circular bathing well, the Ghaus Ali Shah ki baoli, that we have to approach through an underground path. It’s well maintained and the caretaker, Lacche Ram, who lives on the premises, is kind enough to open it up for us despite the late hour. We are told that the baoli had a secret tunnel linking it to the women’s section of the palace nearby, but this access is now blocked up. Then we go through another existing city gate, Delhi gate, to the ruins of the palace, Sheesh Mahal. Despite several reports that talked about intricate mirror-work on the walls of this complex, we see no glass of any kind anywhere—unless one takes into account the telltale, broken liquor bottles that lie around the place. Farrukhnagar is another former ‘princely state’, whose fortunes first faded when its salt-manufacturing industry was crippled by British taxation. Its ruling elites also suffered setbacks in 1857 as well as in 1947; the local Jama Masjid is now a Sita-Ram temple, and though there is still some amazingly intricate stucco and metal grillwork on the house façades all around, the important buildings are all in various states of ruin.
By this time, it is quite dark, and we decide to return to Delhi. We set off again early the next morning, this time driving southwest through Gurgaon, to pick up where we left off the previous evening. We drive past the very beautifully maintained Pataudi Palace, deciding that it doesn’t need our solicitousness, and proceed towards Sohna, stopping at Badshahpur to trace a historic baoli. We wander with failing hope through a new settlement of construction workers and a girls’ school before finally stumbling on an exquisite nineteenth-century baoli that is steadily sinking into oblivion under the weight of undergrowth and stinking piles of trash. Not the greatest tourist destination, we agree soberly among ourselves, as Sankar Sridhar despairs over the photo opportunities that might have been.

Our sense of gloom deepens as we drive southeast to Sohna, which derives its name from the gold that was once panned in the local river. We walk swiftly in and out of the featureless Shiv Kund hot springs. We despair of locating other promised sites—bits of fort walls, a pair of Tughlak and Lodhi-era tombs, an old masjid (now a temple), until Maulana Kalim of the Shahi Jama Masjid offers to get in the car with us and show us around. The spotless, whitewashed Jama Masjid is itself dramatically located on a hilltop, with a madrasa on the edge of a cliff where earnest little boys in embroidered caps are rocking studiously as they commit the holy book to memory. Our spirits somewhat lifted by this charming image, we push on towards Taoru, where we again find we have to drive around in circles, seeking out old-timers for guidance, before we negotiate twisting mazes of back alleys to get to the set of seven amazing fourteenth- to sixteenth-century tombs on the forgotten edge of the town. Despite being the focus of ongoing restorations, the tombs are primarily storehouses for… you guessed it, drying dung cakes, all neatly stacked almost to the tops of the doorways so it’s impossible to even enter most of the structures. The shrine of the nameless Pir Baba around whom the complex of tombs probably mushroomed doubles as a multi-faith temple, with a line of tiles featuring a spectrum of gods and holy places on the back wall and a brass bell out front.

And so we are back on the road, after a chai stop at a little wayside stall where we are served by the charming Arbina on behalf of her father. Perhaps twelve years old, she claims vigorously that she goes to school, but cannot tell us its name. We now head further southeast, to Nuh—seventeen kilometres and twenty minutes away, we are assured by Google Maps. Well, the mapmakers didn’t take the relentless procession of trucks carrying construction material into account, and the journey takes two hours, with no hope of bypassing the block because there are only sheer cliff faces to either side of us. So we settle back and enjoy the rousing music provided by the tractor-powered jugaad vehicles stuck on the road with us, and eventually bump along to the quaint little dargah of Sheikh Musa, a grandson of Baba Farid who lived and died here in the early 1300s. Once there, we climb to the top of one of the slender minars on the main gateway of the dargah, to test out what we’ve been told about it. It’s true, though I’m not sure my head can bear it for too long: if you shake the walls of one of the minars, it rocks… and so does the opposite minar, several dozen metres away!
Then, finally, we head out to our last destination, Chuhimal ki Chhatri and taalab. By now, the routine is familiar: ask repeatedly for what you want from locals who are visibly baffled by your interest, and finally stumble on an amazing site that is in an equally amazing state of disrepair and abandonment. In this instance, the walkways around the taalab, still full of stagnant water, are being put to good use by Billu Tent House for drying carpets, and the elaborate, exquisitely detailed chhatri, built by some long-forgotten trader in the most elaborate eighteenth-century style, is a useful site for a card game that doubles up as a handy toilet.
By now it is once again nightfall, and we hasten to take on the modern maze of Gurgaon’s road network as we drive back home to Delhi.

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The Information

The Route

• DAY 1: We drove west out of Delhi on NH10 and took a left turn on NH71 (which is also Haryana State Highway—SH22) a few kilometres beyond the border of Delhi. Within minutes we were in Bahadurgarh, in Jhajjar district. Then, we got back on SH22 and drove for about 14km, looking out for a red-washed structure crowning a baoli next to a large playground on our right. This was Dulehravillage. We drove another 14km westwards until we hit the edge of Jhajjar town. Soon the large park that encloses the marble-tiled Bua Hassan ka taalab appeared on our left. Immediately after were the Jhajjar tombs, also to our left. Next, we took a right on NH71, northwards towards Rohtak, and drove for about 10km, until we found the turn for Dujana (there was no board to guide us, so we just asked). To find the Gurukul Museum, we returned to Jhajjar and drove south on NH71, towards Rewari. (5km outside of Jhajjar,  we looked for signs on our right). For Farrukhnagar, we returned to Jhajjar and drove for another 26km on SH15A, entering Gurgaon. To return to Delhi, we continued on Pataudi Road to NH8 and cut through Gurgaon.
• DAY 2: To reach Badshahpur from Delhi, we drove west on NH8, then headed 10km southwards on Sohna Road (SH13). Thereafter, we drove straight down south to Sohna, 17km away, on the same road. Then, we headed west on Taoru Road (SH28) to Taoru, in Mewat district, 14.5km away. From there, Major District Road 132 took us the 17km uphill to Nuh, also in Mewat. SH13 brought us back up to Sohna (roughly 21km), from where we looped back to Delhi through Gurgaon.

Where to stay
If you don’t want to return to Delhi at the end of Day 1, you could stay at the Pataudi Palace(from Rs 5,871; neemranahotels.com). Or you could stay at the Rosy Pelican Guest Houseinside the Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary near Farrukhnagar (from Rs 3,500;sultanpurbirdsanctuary.com). To the south of NH8, there is the Westin Sohna Resort and Spa(from Rs 11,000; starwoodhotels.com).

Burhanpur View

Middle Kingdom

Tucked away in a quiet corner of central India, Burhanpur was once a strategic outpost of the Mughal Empire. We dust off the cobwebs to find ‘the place of the Five Wonders’.

"You are going to Burhanpur to write a travel article?” the passenger sitting next to me on the flight to Indore looks incredulous. “There’s nothing to see there except kapas, kapra aur kela (cotton fields, cloth and bananas).” “Bilkul,” agrees his companion, also an Indore businessman. “But what about those famous monuments from the old days?” I protest. “Yes, yes,” he replies with a derisive laugh, “In the old days Burhanpur was famous for four things—gadha, garda, garmee aur goristan (donkeys, dust, heat and graveyards).” The rest of the flight passes in silence.

From Indore, it is a five-hour drive to the town of the three Ks and four Gs. Our first impression of Burhanpur is underwhelming: a grimy town that does indeed display an abundance of gadha, garda and garbage too. The medieval city wall, which once stretched unbroken for nearly eight kilometres, has been knocked down in many places to make way for shops, roadside stalls and parking lots. But the owner of our hotel, who bears the resplendent name of Hoshang Havaldar, is bursting with pride in his hometown which he describes as ‘the place of the Five Wonders’. There are five things in Burhanpur, he tells us, that you won’t find anywhere else in the world: a mosque with a Sanskrit inscription; an ingenious underground water-supply system that still works; Empress Mumtaz Mahal’s hammam; a tomb with perfectly-preserved Shah Jahan-period frescoes; and a Granth Sahib signed in gold by Guru Gobind Singh himself.

We’re armed with a long list of places to see, but you need a knowledgeable local guide to take you through Burhanpur’s nameless galis, chaotic mohallas and desolate outskirts to get to them. We are lucky to find just such a person in Mohammad Yaqub Boringwala, a genial civil works’ contractor. Yaqubbhai briskly starts us off with a visit to the Jami Masjid in the heart of town. There are many things to admire about the Jami Masjid—the solid black basalt stone of which it is constructed, its beautiful proportions, the perfect geometry with which its ninety-six pillars and seventy-five arched capitals join to form the roof, the fine carving on the mihrabs. And then there’s the Sanskrit inscription, deeply chiselled into the hard black stone, which states that the mosque was built by Sultan Adil Shah of the Faruqi dynasty in 1590, and extols him as a just ruler and humble servant of Allah.

So who were the Faruqis? The dynasty was founded by a feudal chieftain of Firuz Shah Tughlaq, who declared his independence in 1382 and established the Khandesh Sultanate, which he ruled from Asirgarh Fort, twenty-two kilometres north of Burhanpur. In 1399, Burhanpur became the capital of Khandesh and remained under the Faruqis until they were defeated by Akbar, who annexed Khandesh in 1601. Thereafter, Burhanpur and its great fort of Asirgarh became a key outpost of the Mughal Empire, from where they kept control of the Deccan. A succession of Mughal princes and trusted courtiers were sent there to earn their spurs. Akbar placed it under the care of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana, one of the nine jewels of his court, and also stationed his black-sheep son, Prince Daniyal, there, to be whipped into shape under Khan-e-Khana’s tutelage. Emperor Jahangir sent his sons Shah Parvez and Khurram (later Shah Jahan) as governors of the region, and so in his turn did Emperor Shah Jahan who placed his son Shah Shuja as the guardian of this strategically important Dakkan ka Darwaza (gateway to the Deccan). Both Daniyal and Shah Parvez died in Burhanpur (Daniyal of delirium tremens brought on by alcoholism; Shah Parvez probably assassinated by one of his brothers) and both lie buried here in crumbling, neglected tombs. 

The Mughal emperor who spent the most time at Burhanpur, and left his unmistakable imprint on the town, was Shah Jahan. He embellished the Shahi Qila built by the Faruqis on the banks of the Tapti river by adding a diwan-i-aam and a diwan-i-khas—both now roofless ruins—and a splendid hammam. A rectangular marble hall with honeycombed domes, the hammam’s ceilings and walls are studded with paintings. Four centuries have taken their toll, the paintings have faded and flaked in many places, but enough remains to reveal an exquisite colour palette of lapis blue, coral, deep red, yellow, green and turquoise; and a profusion of roses, peonies, tulips and irises. Many of these floral compositions have been replicated in pietra dura in the Taj Mahal. In the midst of the flowers is a tiny painting of a domed structure with minarets—Burhanpuris proudly claim it was the first model for the Taj Mahal. At either end of the hammam are little water cascades (“hot and cold showers of those days,” explains Yaqubbhai) and in the centre a bathing pool which would be filled with perfumed water (“Mumtaz Mahal Begum could choose from gulab, kewra or khus”).

On June 7, 1631, two years after Shah Jahan became emperor, Mumtaz Mahal Begum died in Burhanpur in the Shahi Qila at the age of forty, giving birth to her fourteenth child. Local lore has it that the grieving Shah Jahan decided to build a grand white marble tomb for her right there, on the banks of the Tapti, but once work started it was found that the black soil of the region could not support the weight of the structure he had planned; there were also logistical problems in transporting the marble from Makrana to Burhanpur. Until the site in Agra was located, Mumtaz Mahal’s body was kept in the village of Zainabad, on the opposite bank of the Tapti, in a Mughal pleasure retreat called the Ahukhana (deer park).

Amid the ugly facades of recent construction are crumbling havelis and grand stuccoed mansions

First built as a sharaab-shikaar lodge by the dissolute Prince Daniyal, the Ahukhana was later developed by Shah Jahan as a walled Mughal garden, with water channels flanked by rosebeds, and a baradari at the far end of the garden. We make our way there on rutted roads, through dusty hamlets, tramping through fields of cotton and arhar dal, to find a near-ruin on an arid, weed-choked patch of land. Here, in an underground chamber, Mumtaz Mahal’s body lay for six months, embalmed with camphor, acacia and sandalwood, until her son Shah Shuja, by now governor of Burhanpur, had it transported to Agra.

Not long after, Shah Shuja buried his own wife, Bilqis Jahan, in Burhanpur—she too died in childbirth—and her tomb is said to have been built under Shah Jahan’s personal supervision. Standing in a dusty, unkempt graveyard, this exquisite little tomb is built on a flower-shaped plinth, and is locally known as the Kharbuja Mahal, because of its round, ribbed dome. Peer through its narrow entrance and you glimpse a garden of paradise—the walls and arches of the tomb chamber are aglow with flowers and vines and cypress trees in jewel-like colours, all in a miraculous state of preservation. Reader, Shah Shuja Begum’s tomb has to be one of the great unsung treasures of India, hidden away in this forgotten corner of Madhya Pradesh. 

From the Kharbuja Mahal, we crisscross Burhanpur’s labyrinthine streets, its old gateways and sarais, its outlying villages and fields, to take in more medieval monuments. The imposing tombs of two Faruqi rulers boast fine calligraphic carving and stone jaalis, but are in an alarming state of decay. Better preserved is the strikingly elegant garden-tomb of Shah Nawaz Khan, son of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana, which is locally known as the Black Taj. Scenically located at the confluence of the Tapti and Mohana rivers is the many-pillared and domed chhatri of Raja Jai Singh of Amber, Aurangzeb’s general, who died in Burhanpur in 1666 on his way back from a campaign against the Marathas in the Deccan. A forty-minute drive from here, on the Amravati road, past fields of banana and cotton, brings us to Mahal Gulara, a charming garden retreat set amidst pools of water, built by Shah Jahan for a favourite courtesan and singer, Gulara. The pavilions here too bear traces of intricate painting, but the Mughal waterways now serve as a dhobi ghat for the nearby village.

Then on to the Kundi Bhandara, the underground water-supply system built by that brilliant renaissance man, Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khana, who spent thirty years in Burhanpur and shone as an administrator, soldier, scholar and poet (of Rahim ke dohe fame). Tapping perennial springs from the Satpura hills nearby, he laid three kilometres of thick clay pipes, running eighty feet underground, which still supply water to many localities in Burhanpur. What you get to see, however, is just some deep dark holes exuding warm, humid air. We now head to the Gurdwara Bari Sangat to see the Fifth and final Wonder of Burhanpur: the handwritten Guru Granth Sahib commissioned by Guru Gobind Singh during his six-month stay here, with his insignia in gold. But it’s displayed only once a month, and we’ve come on the wrong day.

It’s the right day, however, to visit the great Dawoodi Bohra pilgrimage site, the Dargah-e-Hakimi, an oasis of calm, order and impeccable cleanliness. Muharram is just over, and the dargah is thronged with happy families from Maharashtra, Gujarat and as far away as Tanzania and Uganda. The hundred-acre grounds enclose white marble tombs, green lawns, topiaried hedges, 450 guest rooms and a helipad where the 102-year-old Syedna (head of the sect) descends from time to time. The meals are free—and lavish—we are told, with “meedish and sweedish” served at lunch and dinner every day. 

On our last day, we drive twenty kilometres north of town, on the Indore road, to find that Burhanpur has a Sixth Wonder, the magnificent, rugged fort of Asirgarh. Three layers of massive, fortified walls spiral for 2,000 feet up to the top of the hill. You can see why this impregnable citadel, which divides the valley of the Narmada from the valley of the Tapti, and affords a panoramic view of the Nimar plains as far as the eye can see, was the Mughals’ prized Gateway to the Deccan. Once Asirgarh housed 50,000 soldiers and citizens; today it is deserted and enveloped in eerie silence. There are three large water reservoirs hewn out of the rock; a black stone Jami Masjid built by Adil Shah Faruqi, almost identical to the one he built in town, with the same Sanskrit inscription; and a Shiva temple said to date to the pre-Faruqi time when the fort was ruled by Ahir chieftains. And in one corner, the ruins of a nineteenth-century barracks, and an overgrown British graveyard, the last resting place of several infants and young soldiers, the tombs long robbed of their bronze plaques and marble ornaments. The earliest grave here is dated 1810.

After the silence and stillness of Asirgarh, it’s a bit of a culture shock to return to the din of Burhanpur, with the incessant clack-clack of power looms (this is kapas-kapra territory, remember?), the clip-clop of horse-drawn tongas and the honking of speeding buses. The quieter side lanes look like giant cats’ cradles, with yarn stretched from one end to the other to be twisted into rope—another local industry. Amid the ugly façades of recent construction are crumbling havelis with fine woodcarving and grand stuccoed mansions—vestiges of Burhanpur’s more recent past, in the first half of the twentieth century, when this was a thriving town of textile mills, cotton-ginning factories and prosperous merchants. As we peer into Zafar Sheikh’s sprawling mansion, we are invited into the sitting room where a stuffed leopard and a tiger head, shot by our host, take pride of place. Once Zafar Sheikh was the bidi king of Madhya Pradesh, his factories producing forty lakh bidis a day, but business and fortunes have sadly dwindled now. Still, the tradition of old-world hospitality remains—I leave with a salwar-kameez and a bottle of ittar, gifted by his beautiful daughter Shagufta. It’s the same warmth and graciousness that we experience at Hoshang Havaldar’s hotel—his is now the only Parsi family left in town, where once there were fifty, all wealthy cotton traders and mill owners.

Havaldar and his friend, M.K. Gupta, a retired army doctor, run a passionate two-man crusade to revive interest in Burhanpur’s rich historical heritage. A keen collector and connoisseur of antiquities, Major Gupta shows us an exquisitely carved Sunga-period stone disc from the third century BC, found in the town during digging for a house construction. But Burhanpur’s history goes back even further, says Major Gupta as he shows us a photograph of one of his prize finds. In a village house, three kilometres outside Burhanpur, a large terracotta urn being used as a plant pot caught his eye—one side is etched with the figure of a double-humped Bactrian camel, the other side covered with inscriptions in what seems to be a mixture of Brahmi and Kharosthi. The villager found it when ploughing his field. The inscription is still to be deciphered, but it probably dates from before Ashoka’s time. “So much else must lie buried beneath the soil here,” says Major Gupta, “because Burhanpur, whose ancient name was Bhrignapur, was an important place through thousands of years of our history.” Until, over the last seventy years, it slowly fell off the map.

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The Information

Getting There

Burhanpur is located in south-west Madhya Pradesh, close to the border with Maharashtra. BY AIR The nearest airports are Indore(180km) and Aurangabad (210km). I flew JetKonnect, a non-stop 1hr20min flight from Delhi to Indore. From Indore, it is a 5hr car ride to Burhanpur. BY TRAIN A major junction on the Central Railways, Burhanpur is well-connected by train (Karnataka Express, Punjab Mail) to major cities.

Where to stay

Hotel Ambar, efficiently run by the hospitable and knowledgeable Hoshang Havaldar, has small AC cottages set around a large garden (Rs 1,250; 9424024949,hotelambarburhanpur.com). Or try the Tapti Retreat, run by MP Tourism Development Corporation (from Rs 1,690; 07325-242244).

What to see & do

The Jami Masjid for its Sanskrit inscriptions; the Shahi Qila for Mumtaz Mahal’s hammam; Shah Shuja’s begum’s tomb, also known as theKharbuja Mahal; the Black Taj or the garden-tomb of Shah Nawaz Khan; the domed chhatriof Aurangzeb’s general, Raja Jai Singh of Amber; the Mahal Gulara, a garden retreat built by Shah Jahan; the Kundi Bhandara or the underground water-supply system; Asirgarh Fort; and the Gurdwara Bari Sangat for the Guru Granth Sahib, which carries Guru Gobind Singh’s insignia in gold. Also visit the Ahilyabai Temple and the Moti Mahal, a charming little palace built by Shah Jahan for a favourite courtesan—both are at the base of Asirgarh Fort. In Burhanpur town, the serene dargah of Hazrat Shah Bhikari, a Sufi pir of the Chishti order, is a major pilgrimage site.

In the neat bazaar outside the Dargah-e-Hakimi, you can buy excellent papad made in local Bohra homes, and be fitted out in a rida—that ankle-length frock-cum-hooded cape that Bohra women wear. I restricted my shopping to a beautiful tablet made of clay from Karbala, calligraphed with the words ‘Ya Hussain’. Recommended guide: M. Yaqub Boringwala (9826453574)

Lucknow View

The Trotternama

Happily, not much has changed... Lucknow reveals its flaky, toothsome layers

That Kallu Miyan sheermal-waley and the thieving, na-shukraguzaar milkman were waging their melodious battle of words in the Chawalwali Gali in Lucknow’s Chowk was no minor accident. I didn’t know it then, but the rising, quivering voices, the controlled anger and the abundant euphemisms were, in spirit, an ode to the alley’s original residents... The keepers of eighteenth-century Awadh’s begamati zubaan (refined speech). The guardians of its adab qaida(sophisticated ways). Powerful women, whose offer of a single gilori of paan at the kotha could send its recipient into raptures.

Covered in filth and flour today, the gali is no longer scented with mogre-ka-itr or the wafting strains of a sarangi. But tramping around on a pale winter afternoon, I find it still draws in punters—of a different kind. Lined with sooty shops run by nanfus (bread-makers) who make all kinds of leavened breads through the day, the focus shifts almost entirely to sheermal (Rs 5–9) post lunch. Piled high in flat cane baskets stained with the zaffrani food-colouring of the flaming orange, mildly sweet paratha, the Awadhi sheermal looks nothing like its namesake, the large, sugar-glazed frisbees of Delhi. And even in its crude, derivative, modern form—sans a single strand of saffron—the milk bread holds court like a preening nawab. Congratulating itself on surviving—unlike, say, ananas ka parantha or puris with birds flying out—the hundred and fifty odd years separating Uttar Pradesh from Awadh.
The Awadhi hangover that still consumes most of Lucknow’s old bazaars is hard to shake off. Even when you tuck into a plate of chaat or drain a glass of thandai, both of which can be as Lakhnavi as qormas and kababs, you’re keenly aware (or at least, I was) that a ‘proper’ meal in the city ought to be insistent in its meaty richness. Particularly, when finding a culinary gem seems as deceptively easy as it does in Lucknow. I knew I was elbow-deep in trouble as soon as I invited recommendations from friends in or from the city. With practically no room to make my own discoveries—because there are just too many places-you-cannot-miss—whittling down a ‘shortlist’ felt like cooking my wits on dum. I did cover a sizeable chunk of Lucknow, eventually. But that’s because some of the best-known eateries in town are found in clusters, and because the bazaars of Chowk and Aminabad yield easily to hungry tourists on a rickshaw.
Yet, mostly, it was my greed that fed more greed. A natural order of things that seems to have inspired most food discoveries around here. Invented in the kitchens of the bread-maker Mahumdu, for instance, the sheermal was created as an improvement on the crisp baqar khani; a bread that even in its heyday was a great equaliser. Bridging the distance between the Nawabi dastarkhwan and the streets—paintings suggest it was distributed from atop elephants as tabaruq (blessing) on Muharram—as a relatively cheap (it’s bread, after all) and more portable (it travels well) alternative, which was easy to produce in large numbers.
In fact, for all its nobility and sheathed imperiousness, Lucknow owes much of its culinary glory to the man on the street. I had read about how having lost the patronage of the nobles—nawabs, followed by the taluqdars—in colonial times, the bawarchis (who cook in large quantities), rakabdars (gourmet chefs) and nanfus had to swallow their pride and prove themselves in an open market as shopkeepers. Most of the well-known eateries in the old city—the Muslim establishments, in particular—are a product of that transition.

Even when you tuck into chaat, you are keenly aware (or at least, I was) that a ‘proper’ meal in this city ought to be insistent in its meaty richness

I met the descendants of several such royal retainers, who still flog their connections, while keeping their tills ringing with kababs for five rupees a piece. It’s amazing how well the nawabi khana has adapted itself to feed (and feed off) a man of meagre means. Yet, nothing makes this as obvious to me as Idris‘hotel’ (9415093727), opposite the Pata Nala Chowk Kotwali, a short rickshaw ride from Akbari Gate. A cramped, ramshackle establishment at the edge of a makeshift settlement, where homes breathe into homes, and mosques crouch over chikankari karkhanas, the late Mohammed Idris, and now his sons Abu Bakr and Abu Hamza, have evidently built their reputation on the embers of hard work and consistency. For no matter how incredible it seems at first, this is where the town’s best pulao—arguably a not layered, less spicy, drier version of a biryani—is to be found (Rs 140/plate). A distinction never casually bestowed here.
Cooked in milk and cream, the meat used in the thirty kilos of pulao cooked every day is kid not goat—an udand or one without teeth, I was told. And the rice is a slender variant of arwa, not the more popular sela or upmarket basmati. Tricky, delicate ingredients that can melt into potage in an inexperienced hand. But here, the gregarious Abu Bakr reassures me—between tales of shooting with the crew of BBC London and Fox Traveller, and eating the ‘aloo-wali’ Royal’s biryani in Kolkata where his in-laws live—not a grain escapes notice. Which is perhaps why they don’t have a signboard or even framed photos of filmstars and political heavyweights to hawk their wares. Their only advertisement is the crowd that gathers at lunchtime and in the evenings, warming their hands around the coal fire with the handi on dum. If you care for endorsements though, Abu Bakr could tell you, that when Atal Behari Vajpayee won his first election from here, or more recently, when Rahul Gandhi was in town for a flying visit from Amethi, the pulao and a special bater or quail qorma was packed and delivered to order. A meaty proportion of Abu Bakr’s business relies on what he calls ‘parcel’. With barely four tables tucked behind the counter, it’s easy to see why.

For most vendors, including some in the old city, home-delivery and diversification—read token presence in food courts of the local malls like Sahara Ganj—have become the norm in these recessionary times. A practice that further reinforces the old equilibrium between the common and high tables of Lucknow. This time in reverse though. Making the commoner’s kabab less common. Taking Chowk and Aminabad to the high-rises of Jopling.
The one shop that has mastered this formula, as it has the recipe of the shahi galawat, isTundey Kebabi’s (7897861786). Although the original outlet in Akbari Gate—now with a large gaping hole filled with laminated tables behind the counter—sticks to its over-hundred-year-old ways, serving customers who come to them for buff kababs (`25 for four) wrapped in leaf plates, their newer outlet in Aminabad (just off the main roundabout) thrives on home-deliveries (`55 for four mutton kababs). The latter also sells the raw galawat mix by weight. But since anyone with the mildest interest in Awadhi cooking has heard or read realms about Haji Murad Ali or Tundey miyan—the man who lost an arm after he fell off the roof and rose to fame with his meaty medallions made of 160 ingredients—I won’t belabour the point.
For all the indolent charms of dialling a phone number though, the best way to sink your teeth into the city in the winter is to take a walk. And the best places to do that are Chowk, Aminabad and Hazratganj, in that order. Chowk can consume your entire day, of course—beginning before breakfast with ‘makkhan’ and ending long after dinner with paan and Kashmiri chai (`5) sold on carts in winter. But save an evening each for Aminabad and the upmarket areas around Mayfair Cinema in Hazratganj.
At the latter, queue up for the local phenomena that is the Royal Café (0522-2627070) basket chaat—overladen with tikkis, bhallas, papris, besan pakoras, moori, curd, chukander (beet), anaar (pomegranate) and even a homespun hajme ki chutney to break it all down (`75). A short detour to the lane behind Tulsi cinema-turned-shopping-arcade will bring you to the dhabas that send out smoke signals customarily at mealtimes—Dastarkhwan (try their boti kabab),Naushijaan (their qorma) and Sakhawat (kakori kabab or khatti machhli), further ahead near the Oudh Gymkhana. Stop en route for a cone or two of wintry peas and tomato chaat or just a bag of warm peanuts from a pushcart. While evenings in Hazratganj have a certain air about them, come back if you can for breakfast at the Sharma Tea Corner in Lalbagh (8423390730). Over sixty years old, the shop resembles Delhi’s Keventer’s closely and sticks to its limited ‘Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh-menu’ of sweet bun with white butter (`16), tea in kulhars, thermocol cups or ‘gilas’ (`16/10/8) and quirky rounded samosas (`8).

Chowk can consume your entire day—starting before breakfast with the wintry, ephemeral ‘makkhan’

In Chowk, the key gustatory landmarks are tucked between Gol Darwaza and Akbari Gate—a surprisingly short walk. One that ought to begin early on winter mornings. Ours began at Gol Darwaza, where we were met by peddlers of the ephemeral ‘makkhan’—delicate mounds of yellow protected by a parasol of glass. Similar to daulat ki chaat in Delhi and malaiyyo or nimish in Banaras, this buttery, honeyed confection—made of churned milk, pista, elaichi, kesar, badam and chironji—is left under an open sky for dew to work its magic (`220/kg). Guided by a friendly Mr Mehrotra from the Sachivalaya, we arrived at Jiyalal Japani’s cart just a few metres inside the Darwaza. Serving by far the best makkhan, Japani’s middle-aged son, Sri Ram refused to let us ‘atithis’ pay (something we were used to by now) and led us instead to the ageing halwai Sewak Ram’s, in a dark passage next to the Kaley Ram Mandir.
Doling out hing and urad-dal-ki-kachori fried in ghee, hot off the kadhai, with a dry, spicy aloo cut into tiny cubes, a rasedaar or wet sabzi and a chutney of imli (`25), old Sewak Ram is also accustomed to follow it up with a dona of kaaley gaajar ka halwa, a fudgy dark winter special (`300/kg) and crisp, fantastic jalebis made with a batter that includes quite unusually a portion of moong dal (`200/kg). Others in the same league as Sewak Ram are Vajpayee’s (in the Ram Asrey gali) and Netram’s in Aminabad (near the Hanuman Mandir on Sri Ram Road). For sweetmeats in Chowk though, Ram Asrey, a two-hundred-year-old establishment known for its malai paan with a filling of mishri and mewa (`15/piece), and Radheylal’s Parampara (0522-4067659) at the mouth of the Gol Darwaza are the go-to places in winter. A season when candy-like discs of halwa sohan—mewa and besan held together by cornflour and congealed ghee (`400/kg), the dark milk-cakey doodhiya barfi (`400/kg) and kaaley gaajar ka halwa dominate the groaning shelves.
But if such innocuous offerings won’t do for you, hunker down at Rahim’s at Akbari Gate for breakfast (9335273451). Famous for its buff and mutton nihari (`50/`80) cooked overnight till the meat begins to meld into the gravy, you can also order a plate of paya or trotters (`80), or a curry of white wisps of gooda or marrow (`80), if you’re feeling particularly brave. Mop it all up with Rahim’s phenomenal kulcha (`9), a beautiful leavened disc, crisp outside and soft in its belly that fogs up your glasses each time you break bread. Biryani-pulao for lunch at Zubair’s (aka Haji Rahim) close by and parsindas, kababs made with pieces of meat cut from the leg and shoulder and flattened with a mallet (`60), with ultey-tawe-ke-parathe called Mughlai parathe (`8) at Mubeen’s (9335273451) should feed any remaining atavistic cravings later.
My siege of Lucknow though ends in Aminabad—its narrow veins coursing with the din of chikankari and kolhapuri chappal shops, ‘mixture’ and pansari (grocery) ki dukaans, carts ofbalai, a sweetmeat made of layers of malai (`20), and shahi tukra (`10).... Strolling pastPrakash Kulfi (9415083536) and the grand old dame of Burma Bakery (7388733786), I work up an appetite for dinner at Wahid’s Biryani (0522-2611878). Easy to locate, right off the main chowk, Wahid is to the Tundey here (a twenty-year-old offshoot of the original shop in Chowk) what Jawahar is to Karim’s in Old Delhi. A worthy adversary that has arguably upstaged its famous neighbour, not in numbers but in the quality of patrons it attracts.

Young Hasan—manning the fort in the absence of his father Abid Ali Qureshi, who is currently giving Masterchef India a taste of his talent—brings us heaped plates of mutton biryani and qormas to begin with (they have a ‘No beef’ sign at the doorstep). But he insists we try their kali-mirch chicken with a thin, flaky Mughlai parantha. Tucking in, I wonder if the qorma or the chicken is laced with lazzat-e-taam—a local mix of over twenty-five herbs and spices, including the unexpected zarakush (dried lemongrass), sandalwood powder, rose petals and kewra water. A popular ingredient, kewra is a constant reminder of how Awadh’s dynasty began with Burhan-ul-Mulk Sa’adat Ali Khan’s first settlement in the screwpine jungles of neighbouring Faizabad.
More immediate concerns cause a rumble, however, when I spot a Hamdard and an Angrezi Dawa ki Dukan across the street from Wahid’s. Only to realise that I needn’t have caused myself unnecessary heartburn. If the potent spice mix doesn’t tackle the backlash of an oily, heavy meal, a well-made Lakhnavi paan certainly will. Made of the desi, desavri and mahobaleaves—unlike the maghai in Banaras—the paan here is often pitted as a cure for everything from ulcers and acidity to kamar dard (an aching hip) and taakat (a euphemism for virility). A sort of Unani shortcut to good health. But for all its virtues as a multi-purpose totka (solution), the paan takes its other, equally important job, far more seriously.

For in the folds of a Lakhnavi paan lies the very soul and tehzeeb of Awadh. Not many today, remember, leave alone follow, the code of rituals that once accompanied the offering and eating of a paan. Variably an invitation, a mark of fellowship and even an olive branch, it was a way of life. And in Chowk, at Maghai Paan Bhandar (9839706928), next to the famous Raja Thandai (9452128150), in many ways, it still is. In a framed copy of The Statesman printed in 1951, hung low on its walls, is an interview of its original proprietor Jamuna Prasad Chaurasiya. A man who described a good paan as a concentrated poem and distinguished good from bad as “having a vivacious or a dull wife. One exhilarates and the other stupefies.”
Half a century later, chewing on my own share of elixir, I wonder if the milkman in Sheermal Gali had only offered Kallu Miyan a gilori of paan…