Kolkata: Sick Again...Japanese Food!

Chris and I both woke intermittently throughout the early hours of the morning feeling like somebody was kicking our stomachs from the inside. After visiting the bathroom a few times we rose and had breakfast. Mutton seekh kebabs and buttered brown toast.

Despite Anando's offer to go sightseeing we decided that a better idea was to rest our bellies and laze around for the day. Chris napped while I took photos of him and then we spent a little time planning an itinerary for our upcoming trek. As I said in my first blog post all those months ago...planning really is half the fun. The excitement is building rapidly as we read about where we will be walking each day.

Expertly mixing the pumpkin and rice

Lunch was to be a meal easy on the tummies. Pure vegetarian food. Mind you, we still managed to stuff ourselves as usual this time with rice, dahl, okra, and delicious spiced pumpkin mash. To enjoy the pumpkin to its fullest potential it needed to be mixed with the rice and knives and forks simply were not sufficient. Anando tried giving us a lesson on mixing with our hands and we gave it a good go but his Mum just couldn't bear to see us struggling so much. She took over and, with her experienced hands, mixed up the pumpkin and rice for all three of us. And, you know what? It really did taste better. There was also a curry made with unripe bananas that was there to help our tummies feel better. It tasting fantastic was just a bonus. We finished the meal with Chris' favourite...mishti doi, the sweet curd flavoured with the juice of dates. So good and a true Bengali specialty.

During the afternoon Boss Man called to let us know that he had put somebody on the train to come to Kolkata but the train was delayed so they may not arrive until 8pm. They may also want to rest for the night and then come and get the bike tomorrow morning. We were to wait for a call.

We had a lazy day, hanging around the house until 5:45pm when we jumped in the car and drove and drove to pick Devaleena up from work. After going the wrong way thanks to what Anando referred to as "a woman's bad sense of direction," we found her. Devaleena drove us to dinner and we held on as she zipped through traffic at speed.

Anando and Devaleena

We had dinner at Wasabi, a Japanese restaurant that also sold Chinese and Thai. Fried pork wontons, salmon sushi, seafood fried rice, pad Thai and a Panang Curry. So much food and so delicious. Thankfully our bellies were feeling better by this point so we could enjoy every morsel.

Boss Man didn't call. We went to bed hoping he'd ring in the morning and the exchange would go smoothly.