"God's Own Country"

I spent this past weekend on a houseboat in the region of Alleppey. Everyone said I needed to go if I wanted get "unplugged" and just relax so I booked a flight from Bangalore to Cochin. Then found a nice looking houseboat and was off! Relax I did. There is something so peaceful about being on the water. I was by myself on a 2 bedroom boat with a great crew and a fantastic cook.

Yes, it is as peaceful and beautiful as it looks. 

That's a lot of birds in one tree. 

I thought these were water lilly fields

Nope. Look closer. 

It was hundreds of ducks. 

This church was built by the Portuguese over 500 years ago. 

Rice fields as far as the eye can see. Stunning. 

And now.... for the food. My cook made quite frankly the best food I've eaten in India. It was phenomenal. He is self-taught and just "thinks of it" and makes it. If I ever open a restaurant, I'm relocating him to the US. He would make me a very wealthy man.

I requested "non-veg" so I got the usual vegetables plus fish and chicken with every meal.

Mind you, all this food is for ONE PERSON. Thankfully, once I learned that they eat the leftovers, I didn't feel as guilty trying not to eat it all and purposely left some of everything for them...most of the time.

Lunch day 1. The best thing was the cabbage salad in the top right bowl. 

Dinner day 1. The best thing was the fish fillets at the far left and the okra in the far right bowl. 

Breakfast day 1. Those are fresh coconut pancakes. TO.DIE.FOR.

Lunch day 2. The best things were the fish again and the beet root salad in the bowl right above the banana leaf. That's a fresh banana leaf BTW. He literally cut it 10 minutes before serving on it. I was a little worried that it wasn't clean but I was fine after eating off it. 

Afternoon tea day 2. Fried onions, bananas, and "french toast". 

Dinner day 2. The green bananas on the far left and the shrimp curry in the bowl above it were the best things. 

Finally breakfast day 3. Egg curry. OMFG. My new favorite thing ever. 

Not a bad view while eating eh?

A Fat Man's Epiphany

I've been gone from the US for 4 weeks on Monday and have been in India now for 3 and a half weeks.

I'm currently in Cochin, which is about 500 miles from Bangalore. I'm spending the weekend on a jetty (houseboat) to cruise the lakes and rivers of Alleppey ("God's Own Country"). Alleppey is about an hour from Cochin so flew in last night and had to spend the night in a Courtyard Marriott and I'm getting picked up in an hour to be driven down to Alleppey.

The 3-star hotels in India are magnificently nice. A Courtyard Marriott back home is seen as a budget hotel but this one is beautiful. Though there are some engineering flaws that come with the territory for a 3rd world country. IE, the gaps in the shower glass that allows water to flood my bathroom floor so I have to put towels down to soak it up. Other than that, it's very nice. One feature I've yet to find elsewhere in India is a bathroom scale.

After 4 weeks, I know I've lost weight. I'm not eating the amount of food I was back home (damn you LinkedIn cafeteria) and I walk to work. Plus, I've been sightseeing every weekend I've been here so have been doing a lot of walking (and climbing that fricking mountain in Sri Lanka). So I was excited to jump on the scale and see what I'd done to my increasingly expanding body.

The results?

4 weeks, 11.7 pounds.

I had guesstimated at least 10 so I was just about spot on. Why is this? A very simple explanation actually. I haven't been eating breakfast... or dinner for that matter.

Back in Mountain View, anyone who knows me knows that at 11:00:01am Tarun and I are off to the cafe to get lunch. Here, people don't eat lunch until 1:30-2:30pm. If you go to the cafeteria at 12:00, the food usually isn't even out yet. Food in India tends to be heavy in starch. Rices and naan, roti, dosa, etc. They serve rice and bread at lunch every day. So my tendency has been to eat a larger lunch around 2pm, and that keeps me satisfied throughout the rest of the evening. I think in 4 weeks, I've eaten dinner (not including Sri Lanka which I ate more since I was burning more calories) 5 times. I've also come to discover that while I like Indian food very much, I don't love it. For example, I LOVE pizza. If my relo assignment was Italy, I would be enormous by now.

It's also made me realize how much I ate back home. Huge lunch at work, snacks around 3pm (damn you again break room), then a full dinner.

At this rate, I'm destined to lose at least 20 pounds since I have another 5 weeks in India. Then I'll hopefully return to the US svelte and lean because I'm going to gorge myself on pizza. 

Need to stay awake all night long? Here's a secret how to do it.

Let a mosquito loose in your room.

You will be up for hours looking for the little bastard trying to kill it.

My room is on the 2nd floor, it has no windows that open, and is on the back side of the building. It takes me 5 minutes to get to the exit.

Yet, a mosquito still managed to get into my room last night. Little ****** bit me twice on the hand. I was up from 4:06am - 4:52am looking for it. Finally turned the AC down and I saw him and squished him.

I hate mosquitos.

What's a dollar worth?

In this hilarious clip from the movie "Eurotrip", 4 Americans are stranded in Bratislava and only have "$1.86 American... what are we going to get with that?"

Yes, international currency exchange rates can be quite ridiculous. Case in point.

In Sri Lanka, I had a dinner of...

A Caiparinha with my appetizer of duck liver pate on wheat toast triangles with balsamic vinaigrette.

An entree of 4 of the largest grilled "jumbo" prawns I've ever seen (I swear they were lobsters) over garlic mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus and locally picked baby tomatoes.

A dessert of white and dark chocolate mousse served in a chocolate bowl.

By far the best meal I ate in Sri Lanka. The total cost including tip was.... 802 rupees.

That's $6.13 "American".

The Grand Hotel dinner buffet in Nuwara Eliya which would EASILY rival any Las Vegas casino cost 1050 rupees... or $8.03 "American".

Makes paying $5 for a Big Mac back home seem a little pointless. 

Sri Lanka...The land of all things spectacular and beautiful

If that's not the official tourist slogan, it damn well should be. What a truly amazing country.

I'm not going to waste your time with words. Hopefully pictures do the talking.

Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage

City of Polonnaruwa

Wild elephant

Fortress of Sigiriya, "The Lion Rock" Read about this amazing fortress here. And yes, I lugged my fat butt up to the top of that beast.

Dambulla Cave Temple

How's that for a view?

The flat mountain in the distance is called "Bible Mountain" because apparently Portuguese settlers left bible on top of it. 

Nuwara Eliya. These are tea fields. Picked by hand. There are thousands of acres of them and they are fantastic to look at.

Capital city of Colombo.