Wonderful food, a warm welcome and a beautiful location.

Holly and David’s Indian Adventure

It’s just 2 weeks now until we leave for our month long quest to understand Indian Food (see, not a holiday).  We have visas back from the embassy (phew!), plane tickets printed, hotels booked, train seats reserved, guides and cooking teachers organised.  We’ve shopped for odd requests for things for us to bring from the UK; whisky (fair enough), Vanilla Extract (coals to Newcastle?) and marigold gloves (wtf??).

Amongst all of the vital preparations, re-homing the dogs being priority number one, we’ve had that nice Simon Blogg create this fabulous map for us and then we’ve only gone and made it interactive.  Click on the little flags and you’ll see what we’ll be up to.  As we go along we’ll be adding  links to things we’ve done, places we’ve visited, blogs we’ve written, recipes we’ve cooked and other great stuff.

We’d love this to be an interactive trip as well as an interactive map, so any ideas of what we should do, questions you want us to find the answer to, advice on traveling in India or anything else that comes to mind, please keep in touch through the comments box, Facebook or email.

We’re massively over excited about it, obvs, and Christmas 2013 will be one to remember and most definitely very different from Christmas 2012.

Holly and David

  • 18th December. Landed in Dehli (Blog ) and will spend 3 nights here.
  • Day 1 - A Dehli walkabout around the back streets and some great food already. (Blog )
  • Day 2 Some thoughts on Dehli so far. (Blog )
  • Day 3. more exploring in South Delhi and some great food. (Blog )

We took an overnight train from Delhi to Jodhpur arriving on 20th December. We we're here for 4 days exploring the city and learning about Rajasthani food.
  • Our Trip from Delhi to Jodhpur (Blog )
  • And some cooking classes in the Blue City. (Blog )
  • And a blog about lfe on the streets of Jodhpur (Blog )

We decided 5 hours in a car was preferable to a 15 hour train journey so we've arrived in Udaipur mid afternoon on the 24th December. We're at the Panorama guest house overlooking Lake Pichola. It has a great view and a nice room. In Udaipur we have three days private cooking classes with Mary Thomas, an Indian friend of Vicky, who has a farm in Kota with her husband Joy and who is the sister of Frances, who I sail with and who lives in Kingswear. I know, right?! It's a small world.
  • Christmas in Udaipur (Blog )

We'll be pitching up at Vicky and Joy's place, Colonel Sudhir Farm, on 29th December and staying through New Year. We'll be taking it easy here although hopefully we'll get to see the farming side of food in India and get our hands dirty with some tasks around the farm.

On 3rd January we leave Kota and take the overnight train to Mumbai. I'm already thinking that going from 4 relaxing days in rural Rajasthan to the incessant noise, crowds and clamour of the city will be a shock. But there will be a new style of food and our old friends Sue and Nathan have introduced us to Kalyan. Kalyan is a journalist who gives private tours of Mumbai and has produced an itinerary of all the best eateries and markets. Having a local guide to help us make sense of it all will be a great help.

Another overnight train (and the rest) will bring us to Kochi, in Kerela on 8th January. After at least 27 hours on a train a little luxury is called for and we're booked into The Old Courtyard Guest House. Kochi has a multi cultural history and we'll be visiting Vasco Da Gama's grave, finding out about the Chinese fishing nets, exploring the Spice markets. After that our friend Annamma is sending us by taxi to Munnar, 6000ft up in the hills.

On 14th we fly from Kochi back to Delhi and we'll have a final day in Delhi before heading home.

A four hour drive from Kochi to Munnar will take us into the mountains where we'll be exploring tea, cardamom and coffee plantations.

In Calicut we'll be guests of Annamma's cousin. We can't wait to experience Kerelan hospitality. the people of Kerela are world renowned for their generosity.

Click on the flags for information about our route.