Every country has its taste. For me Ladakh tastes after milk tea and momo dumplings. This is the taste that I feel on my tongue when I think about Ladakh. If I want to be honest, I must also add bread and bananas.
But we tried
much more. Local apricots from the old women who sell vegetables at the Main
bazaar. Egg and veg thali plates from Ladakhi restaurant. Apricot jam in
Dzomsa. Thukpa, tasty thick soup with pasta and vegetables. Yoghurt. Dhal with
rice in different variations. Meggi soup in tea tents. Bread omelet with
vegetable. Masala chai. Chapati with marmalade. Cookies from bakery in Hunder.
There is a lot more you could taste in Ladakh if you came here to eat. However,
we didn’t come here because of food. We wanted just to eat as locals do, which
often means to eat good but simple…
We pass through the back alley behind the Main Bazaar in Leh and open the
entrance curtain to one of the "restaurants" without windows. After
two days in Ladakh, we dared to walk into one of these, at first glance, not
entirely attractive establishments. So far, we haven't had the slightest
problem with our stomach (and we will have none till the end), so it's time to
start to get some experiences. There are several locals sitting at the tables
which seems promising and we ask the corpulent Ladakhi woman with rosy cheeks
if she has a menu.
- "No menu," she replies with a smile.
- Using simple English and hands we talk about what she has. It is a classic selection: "momo, thukpa, pasta".
- "Then please veg momos and one thukpa," we order dumplings
filled with vegetables and soup.
The food comes just in a minute and it is really good. We all enjoy it. Robert manages to stuff around 6 momo dumplings into himself. After two weeks, we get a bit overeaten by them, but not now. The price for a decent portion is 110 rupees, which at the current exchange rate means about 30 Czech crowns (slightly over 1 euro). And since most of the time it is enough to order two meals for three of us, we typically eat for around 60 CZK.
After this experience, we no
longer go to other than local restaurants and enjoy local food a lot - dhal
with rice, thukpa, momos...and only avoid meat. Sometimes we go also for thali or bread omelet (the
best one I ever had) to Ladakhi restaurant close to Main bazaar. Only once,
after the Markha valley trek, we make an exception and take Robert to one of
the international restaurants that Leh is now full of, for pizza. It was nice
to see how much joy was in his eyes when he was eating that pizza. Comparable
was maybe only when we took him to the playground in Delhi after two and half
weeks in Ladakh without having a real playground...
Robert had to get used to the
fact that even here we sometimes come across slightly hot foods (especially
sauces and dhal), but compared to Delhi, most of them are not at all hot and
Robert eats almost always without any problems.
However, no food can beat in importance the tea. Ladakh runs on tea. Black
tea, mint tea, milk tea, or masala tea. You arrive at the hostel and get
offered tea. You arrive at the homestay and the first thing you get to your
hand is cup of tea and big flask with more is always standing close by. The
tea is also a good sign of the price level of the restaurants - the standard
price is 20 rupees for black tea (approx. 6 crowns) and it goes to 30 rupees in
better restaurants. The best tea in Ladakh was definitely the masala chai we
got offered by pony men at broken tea tent after passing a pass on Markha
valley trek, about which I wrote already earlier.
Even in the smallest local pub you always
get on your table big carafe with water and clean cups. I find it really cool.
However, we are careful (not wanting to test Indian medical care) and better
keep drinking our own filtered water. 
We sometimes go to Dzomsa in the center of Leh, where you can for 7 rupees
per liter refill your bottles with purified water, but mostly we filter the
water directly from the tap with our mechanical filter. Compared to Delhi, the
tap water here tastes great, so apart from the first two days, we don't buy
bottled water at all. We have some minerals and vitamins to add to our water to
beat the headache from high-altitude and it seems to work quite well. Friends
suggested us drink Cola as it should help with the high altitude the best, but
I used this brutal force only once after we arrived from Markha valley and I
felt for two days really weak and dizzy and I cannot say if it anyhow helped.
If Ladakh runs on tea, we run on bananas. The number of bananas we ate in Ladakh is crazy, and it got even worse in Delhi, where bananas were 3 times cheaper, one banana costing slightly above 1 CZK. Almost every day in Leh we bought in addition to our regular dinner in the restaurant 6 bananas, 2 cucumbers and 2 carrots in a vegetable window. Then we got 4 flat breads from tandoori oven in the alley below the Leh Palace for 10 or 15 rupees each and we're all set for the trip.
To be honest, we were not thinking much about food in Ladakh as there was
so much else to do. But when we ate, we really enjoyed our food. Because eating
when you're hungry has one big advantage - everything tastes incredibly good.
We carry home a book with Ladakhi recipes, because when sitting on the
plane home, we already miss the great food and tea from the small Tibet...
Comments
Post a Comment