Veiw from the old mosque in Junagadh

Two children at above mentioned mosque
(the parents asked if the kids could have their picture taken with us after this and the little one was not having it.)

cara at the sari shop

We are now in Diu! Nice little beach town. It was once Portuguese but was taken over by India. A lot of the Portuguese influence and people are still here. The dichotomy is very interesting, It is still India, but with a Portuguese twist. Very friendly people, and very good seafood. It has come to my attention that I haven't really talked about the food much. Well, the food in Dharamsala was both Indian and Tibetan styles. Menus contained items from momos (which are an Asian style dumpling) which can be filled with meat or veg and comes steamed or fried, to several classic Indian dishes. Another good Tibetan dish was Tanthuk which was like a noodle soup with vegetables and mutton if you wanted. It was very nice when it was rainy. Every restaraunt had their own homade chili sauce which was addicting. Further south we started seeing more spicy foods, and also Dosas. Dosas are delicious, I find myself ordering them when I'm not really sure what to order. They've become the old stand-by. They are like a crispy crepe kind of thing filled with several choices of savory fillings such as potatoes, veggies, or cheese, and spices. They are folded into a triangle usually bigger than your plate and served with some kind of sauce and sour curd on the side. Also the train and bus rides are a good way to taste some regional cuisine. You can get all sorts of snacks, or what they call "fast food", which is not at all what we call fast food. Snacks range from fresh peanuts roasted in sand to home-made candies or maybe fresh pomegranate seeds with special seasonings. The fast food is always different, the only similar thing is that it is always fast and usually contains something fried and is always delicious. One other commendable meal was the "Amritsar fish" which was an Amritsar specialty that we went through hell to get to (or rather the bicycle rickshaw driver did). The only information that I could get out of the waiter about this dish was that it was some kind of special fish that you could only find in Amritsar. I don't know if this is true or not, but it sounds nice. The rest was just guess work. It was chunks of White fish fried with lots of salt and some spices and no breading. It was served with shallots and lime wedges, something like a roasted jalapeno and cilantro sauce on the side, some shredded cabbage and carrots, and paratha which is a layered flat bread. The way I describe it sounds very Mexican, which is true, but it also tasted very Indian somehow. I did manage to get a very nice samosa recipe from a Sikh guy on the train. Well hopefully I will get more. -ashby