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Food of Muslim India

Muslim restaurant, Fatehpur Sikri (786, on the wall, is a somewhat controversial mystical number in Islam)

How distinct are the Muslim and Hindu cultures of the Indian subcontinent? As we know, Indian Muslims eventually felt that their culture was different enough to warrant an entirely separate nation state, that of Pakistan, but of course Muslim and Hindu Indians have lived together for centuries and are indistinguishable in many respects. Some Muslim Indians/Pakistanis may think of themselves as ethnically distinct, tracing their family’s origins to Iran, Central Asia or even Arabia, but a quick facial read suggests that most Muslim Indians are of the same genetic stock as their Hindu bretheren. The languages of Urdu and Hindi have sadly diverted since Partition, but they are still mutually comprehensible enough that India and Pakistan constitute one market for Bollywood films.

But one argument in favor of distinctness of identity is cuisine. Most Indian foods are consumed by Hindus and Muslims alike, but there are clearly certain dishes that are more frequently served and eaten by Muslims or have definite ties to other parts of the Muslim world. (Dietary rules–such as Hindu vegetarianism–may have contributed to the development of such distinct foods.)

Restaurant just outside the Friday Mosque in Agra

The single defining characteristic of Muslim food in India (and, to an extent, Muslim food all over the world), is meat. It might have to do with the fact that many Muslim societies were pastoralists, but meat is much consumed in the Muslim world, often in the most basic grilled form–kebab. (Note, however, that while beef is consumed by Muslims outside the subcontinent, it is almost never eaten in India, even by Muslims, perhaps following the advice of Babur, see post of 2009.02.16.)

Muslim butcher in Crawford Market, Bombay

Meat on the grill, Old Delhi

Meat on the grill, Uzbekistan

One of the most famous categories of Indian food is Mughlai cuisine, which is served at some of the top restaurants in the country. Said to be the food of the Mughal court, Mughlai food is not dissimilar from the Punjabi fare that most people are most familiar with, but particularly rich and meaty.

Khyber, Bombay, one of our favorite restaurants in the world

Seekh kebab at Karim’s in Old Delhi, one of the most famous Mughlai restaurants in India. The founding family of Karim’s is said to have worked in the kitchens of the Mughal court, and some of the dishes bear the names of Mughal emperors. (Read this hilarious post on Karim’s on a great expat Delhi blog, Our Delhi Struggle.)

In addition to rich Mughlai cuisine, there are certain dishes that are especially associated with Muslims in India. Foremost among these, and perhaps one of my favorite dishes anywhere in the world, is biryani. It is said that the Nizams of Hyderabad had a biryani recipe for every day of the year, and had different dinner outfits to go with the various recipes. To this day, Hyderabad is the capital of biryani, and no biryani we have had anywhere else (and trust me, I order it often) comes anywhere close to the texture and fragrance of Hyderabadi biryani (and this, despite our not having been to the most famous of Hyderabadi biryani shops, Paradise). Muslim Indian Biryani has also become one of the most common foods in the Gulf, due to the large number of restaurants run by workers from the Subcontinent (and perhaps in some cases because the local cuisine isn’t very good!).

Biryani, served in a Muslim restaurant in Cochin, Kerala

Other dishes are even more closely tied to the religion. Haleem, a paste-like dish of slow-cooked meat with wheat, is a food that is commonly eaten for iftar (the breaking of the fast) during Ramadan, and can be found in Muslim areas in the Subcontinent.

Finally, sweets. Sweets can carry a great deal of cultural meaning and identity–desserts are often some of the most elaborate dishes of a cuisine and are tied to festivities and ritual. Traveling throughout Muslim India, one frequently encounters sweets that have connections to other parts of the Muslim world, sometimes making one scratch one’s head wondering in which direction the recipes traveled.

Rice pudding, in the form of kheer, is of course a very common Indian dish, prepared mostly for festivities but also featuring heavily in overseas Indian buffet menus, but baked rice pudding, called firni, is found particularly in Muslim restaurants. Here, a very standard form, in nice clay pots, sold in a Muslim neighborhood of Calcutta. (Similar clay pot firni is available at Karim’s in Delhi.)

Firni sutlac served in Turkey. Both in India and Turkey, one of my favorite desserts.

The first time we saw faluda, in Iran, we were somewhat puzzled at this odd, noodle-y dessert. We found faluda in both Delhi and Bombay, in somewhat different forms.

Faluda, at an Old Delhi restaurant

Faluda, at famous Badshah Cold Drink House near Crawford Market in Bombay. The red flavor, with rose water, was called the Shirazi.

Faluda, from a shop in Esfahan, Iran

Can a fruit have a religion? I hesitate to call the pomegranate a Muslim fruit, but it is definitely seen more frequently in Muslim countries. Pomegranate juice was a delightful streetside treat in the Levant. The Quran does say that the fruit is a gift from God!

Pomegranates, sold in Hyderabad

Pomegranate seeds adorn Turkish ashure, or Noah’s pudding

The Ghantewala Halwai on Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk is said to have served the Mughal court. (To be honest, not all that tasty.)

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India photo

Indian Dysfunction

People often compare India and China, the two being the billion plus population nations that are on the fast track of development and wealth. Now, of course, as anyone who has visited the two countries knows, the level of development in the two countries, at least in the most visible areas, is not at all comparable–China appears to be decades ahead. In this post, I want to identify certain aspects of modern India that appear to be simply broken. As I said in my post about Varanasi (2009.02.24)–how do they live this way??

Filth. Sometimes it feels like different cultures and societies have different attitudes toward cleanliness. It’s not only about wealth and the availability of sanitation services, but the tolerance that people develop to clutter and piles of garbage. No country is dirtier than India.

Alley in Varanasi

Why, oh why, is India so dirty? Some of it is that they have a certain acceptance of organic waste–such as animal dung, which is used for fuel–but nowadays much of the garbage is the standard consumer waste, largely plastic, that one sees everywhere else. Other countries have their dirty moments, but none come close to India. In Pushkar, Rajasthan, the holy lake became so polluted that it reached the tipping point. In a matter of days, hundreds and hundreds of huge fish died all at once, causing a stench so severe that it was difficult to pass within 50 meters of it. It had to be completely emptied out and they’re still trying to figure out how to refill it.

Children playing in the slums of Bombay and Madras

Cows eating garbage outside Madurai, Tamil Nadu

Scams and theft. This might be somewhat controversial, but there is no doubt that India has a higher rate of scams and theft (albeit non-violent) than the vast majority of other countries in the world. It is definitely not poverty alone–plenty of poor countries in the world pose no risk for the traveler in this regard and the worst Indian perpetrators are not the worst off (the actually poor are generally, as everywhere, extremely honest). Perhaps it’s the sense of competition that comes from living in such a crowded country (although the same could be said about China), or perhaps there is some cultural force at work. The absolute worst story we’ve heard, and probably the most famous, is that of an Agra restaurant that deliberately poisoned its customers in order to collect a commission from the clinic that treated them (eventually resulting in a death). We’ve been told by a fellow traveler that rickshaws immediately come to the assistance of the injured in order to collect clinic commissions. There are definitely some depraved, industrial-sized schemes in China–such as adulterated baby formula–but scams in India seem far more common.

A public safety campaign

Bureaucracy. I blame the British for this one. The level of (quite useless) bureaucracy in India is comical. Our best example of this was the time we left behind an item on a train car, which was somewhat useful to us but of almost no resale value. Immediately recognizing that we had left it on our berth with our bedding, we tried to find the laundry section or lost and found to try to recover it. We ended up in the office of the railway police, writing down a bizarrely formal letter that was dictated to us (“Dear Sirs…”) and included such useful pieces of information as our parents’ names and professions. This letter was then translated into Hindi. Anyone who has been in the backroom of an Indian office has seen the ridiculously dusty binders, piles and bags of forms and other documents that accumulate, for no use at all.

Form for buying train tickets. As I described in my post of 2009.03.05, buying train tickets in India can be bizarrely complicated, with long lines and byzantine quotas and concessions.

Infrastructure and logistics. Of course India is a third world country, but it is in many respects quite a modern one, and so some of the things that cannot be taken for granted are astonishing. Power routinely cuts out in some of India’s biggest cities, including such supposed gems of modernity as Bangalore. In one of the busiest train systems in the world, the Bombay suburban rail, there are said to be up to 3500 deaths a year. Parcels sent by mail must be sewn up in fabric and then sealed with wax, for security. One feels that, in other countries, these kinds of problems would be solved–in India, such faulty systems seem to continue year after year.

Commuting in Bombay

Mail service

Miscellaneous. I’m not sure how to categorize the rest of these items, but they are things that, in other countries, simply would not be.

A body floating in the Ganges, Varanasi. I understand that the Ganges is a holy river, but should people really be bathing in and drinking water into which dead bodies (some with infectious diseases) are tossed?

Again holy, but should cows really be free to roam downtown Bombay? Even rickshaws aren’t allowed!

Dhobi Ghat, Bombay. In a city as modern and wealthy (in many respects) as Bombay, it is bewildering that it is still more efficient to have an entire village of people doing laundry by hand than to use washing machines.

Women-only car, Bombay suburban rail. Many countries have a sexual harrassment problem, but we’ve definitely heard more stories of unwanted touching (both man on woman and man on man) from India than elsewhere.

No other country has electrical wiring like India.

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India photo religion

Islam in India

Prayer at Nakhoda Mosque, Calcutta

The title of this post is somewhat over-general, but I did want to make certain broad points on Islam in India, as I have done in previous posts (see post of 2008.08.16 on Indonesia and 2008.11.14 on the Balkans).

India has the third largest Muslim population in the world. This is an oft-cited fact and one you’ve perhaps already heard. The Indian Subcontinent taken together has almost a third of all of the Muslims in the world, and India has just about as many Muslims as Pakistan or Bangladesh. These three countries and Indonesia are, by far, the greatest countries in terms of Muslim population–no Arab or Middle Eastern country even comes close. They are, in one sense, Islam’s center of gravity.

The history of Islam in India goes way back. Perhaps because Hindus make up the majority of India’s population and because Hinduism is by far the more ancient religion, Islam is often thought of as a relative newcomer, an alien seed taken root in the subcontinent. However, Islam is no newer to the Indian Subcontinent than it is to almost anywhere else outside of the Arab world. Parts of now Pakistan were conquered by Arab armies as early as the 8th century and parts of now India were conquered by Muslim invaders as early as the 12th century. Islam came to India as early or earlier than it came to such places as Turkey, Central Asia or West Africa.

By the time Babur, the first Mughal Emperor, arrived in India in the 16th century, Muslim rulers had been in charge in Delhi for hundreds of years, and Muslim rulers were already installed in other parts of the Subcontinent, including as far south as Golconda/Hyderabad. (post on pre-Mughal Muslim rulers of India to come)

Tombs of the Qutb Shahis of Golconda, near Hyderabad

While Islam came largely from the North (generally through conquest), it also arrived on South Indian shores (generally through trade). It is easy to think of the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals when thinking of Muslim India, but one often forgets the significant Muslim populations of South India, some of which arose even before northern Muslim conquests as the belief washed ashore with Arab traders following the monsoon winds. Some Urdu-speaking Muslims in the North may with varying degrees of credibility associate themselves with Greater Iran/Central Asia, even going so far as to say that they are Iranian or Mongol rather than Indian, but South Indian Muslims are very much the same as their Hindu brethren–just of a different faith. (Orthodox Hinduism and harsh adherence to the caste system incentivized some Keralans to convert to Islam and Christianity.) It has been said that because of the different history, religious tension does not exist in the south as it does in the north.

Alimood Mosque near Varkala, Kerala

Sufism played a huge role in the extension of Islam in the Subcontinent. In my post of 2009.02.21 on Akbar and Fatehpur Sikri, I mentioned sufi saint Salim Chisti. Sufis played a principal role in spreading Islam throughout the subcontinent, far greater a role than direct contact with Muslim invaders from the north or Arab traders from the sea. The most famous of these is Muin-ud-din Chisti, buried in Ajmer, who hailed from now Iran and studied in Bukhara and Samarkand before arriving in now India with Mohammed of Ghor. Sufis appealed to Indians not only through personal holiness and piety, but by incorporating certain Hindu forms and practices. Sites related to sufi saints, such as the tomb of Muin-ud-din Chisti in Ajmer and the tomb of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi are by far the most venerated Muslim religious sites in India, and sufi practices such as the use of music are widespread. (Compare to the orthodoxy of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who is said to have forbidden music altogether, for both Muslims and Hindus.)

Shrine of Khawaja Muin-ud-din Chisti, in Ajmer

Qawwali music played at the Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi, in the direction of the tomb

Itinerant sufis are perfect analogs of Hindu sadhus, and Indians sufis often adopt a sadhu-like form, with a different color palette (green instead of yellow or saffron).

In its expansion, Islam in the Subcontinent adopted Hindu forms and practices. Syncretism is a natural development of religion, and Islam adopted certain (relatively superficial) aspects of Hinduism in its spread across the Subcontinent. I imagine that these practices were adopted not only by sufis seeking converts but also by recent converts continuing past practices. In addition to music (which is admittedly of a totally different style than Indian Hindu music), there is the use of flowers and the importance of pilgrimage. Of course, pilgrimage exists in Islam around the world–including the all-important hajj–but it is practiced with a particular intensity in the Subcontinent. (I should note that one can see Hindus visiting Muslim sites in India, just as Muslims visit Christian sites in the Middle East.) All in all, the end result is a form of Islam that is somewhat less austere than in many other parts of the world.

Flowers for sale at the Nizamuddin Dargah

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Trains in India

Varkala Station (VAK, to friends)

Especially with decent sleeping arrangements, rail is by far my favorite mode of travel. There are many reasons for this. One is simply nostalgia for the days when it was the fastest mode of travel, with the sound of the engine and the uniforms of the conductors giving one’s trip the sort of glamour seen in North by Northwest or Murder on the Orient Express. Perhaps more important, the sense of journey and distance is tangible on a train. You see the land pass by next to you, you feel the constant forward motion and the gentle swaying motion of the car. The views are far superior to the sides of highways or the blankness mostly seen outside airplane portholes. Finally, there is the sense of luxury, in terms of time and space, that it offers. Air travel feels frantic and is filled with much queueing and stress. Train travel offers far greater space, freedom and flexibility than even first class air travel, the ability to get up and walk the length of the train, have a proper meal in a dining car, and interact with other passengers.

Other than perhaps Europe, taken as a whole, or China (see my post of 2008.07.28), India is the greatest country/region in the world to explore by train. The network is extensive, covering almost all parts of the country other than the far north, and service is fairly frequent and reliable (although subject to delays at times). Especially given the relatively greater chaos and danger of Indian roads, the train is definitely the way to see India.

To the bottom tip of the peninsula

That said, Indian trains are far from problem free. Yes, I acknowledge that the Chinese system has its problems, largely in the procurement of tickets (queues can be truly horrendous and the ticket agents impatient and at times surly), but Chinese trains are, largely, clean, fast and punctual. The Indian Railway has its own set of problems with ticket purchasing, and is, in addition, a bit dirty, somewhat slow and often delayed.

Late, late, late, late

Your first step in any Indian rail journey is, of course, buying the ticket. Ticket office, Calcutta Sealdah Station (SDAH)

Nowadays, most tourists probably opt to buy tickets online, or through an agent that is connected to the online system. Although the system seems to have improved greatly from 2003, when it was something of a joke (we ordered tickets online only to discover when picking them up in the Delhi office that the order had been handwritten into a large ledger), we have had problems getting our credit cards to work on the somewhat confusing multiple “payment gateways” and have at times had to resort to more traditional methods, in particular to access the all-important “tourist quota” (more on this later), which is not available online. That said, online ticketing is generally extremely convenient (and can be done overseas, in advance of an India trip), and it is a service that is not even available in, say, China.

International Tourist Bureau, New Delhi Railway Station (NDLS)

The most traditional method, for a foreign tourist in India, is to use one of the “International Tourist Bureaus” located in the principal Indian railway stations, such as Delhi, Varanasi and Bombay. Now, these ITBs are pretty good, and are able to access the tourist quota, but there are significant queues of foreigners and service can be very slow. Also, the ITBs cannot solve the principal ticketing problem with Indian trains, which is that tickets are often unavailable. The oversubscription of transit in India is a bit of a puzzle to us, having visited many developing countries; Indians, however poor they are statistically, seem to have time and money to travel a great deal. Now, part of that is because people migrate into cities to work, as in China, and also because people travel to go on pilgrimage, an important aspect of Hindu religious culture, but I think the main reason is simply because they can, because tickets on Indian trains can be absurdly cheap. For example, the base fare for a 1000 km trip in Second Class (unreserved) is 175 Rupees (3.50 USD), or 295 Rupees (6 USD) in (non-AC) sleeper class (compare to 2420 Rupees (49 USD) in first class on a fast Rajdhani train). Another part of the Indian Railways ticketing puzzle is the quota system. There are numerous “quotas” for which spaces are reserved on the Indian train system, not only for foreign tourists but for all sorts of other categories of people (ladies, defense, parliament house, handicapped, etc.). Indeed, guidebooks suggest that there is *always* some sort of space available on an Indian train, if you can just persuade someone to dip into the right quota. Perhaps the most important quota, in addition to the tourist quota, is the tatkal quota, which reserves a block of seats until five days before the travel date for individuals who are purchasing tickets from the origin to the terminus of a given train. Almost as complicated as the quotas are the concessions (discounts) that are available for various classes of people, including people with various different handicaps, patients traveling for treatment, widows of wars and acts of terrorism, artists and athletes traveling to performances and competitions, etc. It is all quite byzantine. But perhaps the most bewildering aspect of Indian train ticketing for the foreign traveler is the ability to buy tickets without a reservation, in something called RAC (reservation against cancellation, which allows you to board the train and await placement into a berth) or WL (waitlist, which requires you to keep checking your status, up to the point of departure, to see if you’ve been confirmed a seat). Now, given the quota system, and cancellations, a person with a small waitlist number is almost certain to get seat/berth in the end, and we’ve relied on this system with some confidence that we will clear. But waitlist numbers seem to go into the hundreds! How can people buy waitlist tickets numbering into the hundreds for, say, a train trip that will last two days? Are people’s schedules really so flexible that they can just keep checking and show up to the station each day, to see if they’ve cleared?

Checking the list, New Jalpaiguri and Malda Town Stations (NJP and MLDT, respectively)

* * *

The complexity doesn’t stop there. Perhaps indicative of the stratified social structure in India, with huge gaps between poor, middle class and rich, long distance trains can have more than five different classes of travel, including unreserved general seating or Second Class, (non-AC) Sleeper, AC 3 Tier, AC 2 Tier and AC First (compare to Chinese trains, which only have three classes–soft seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper).

Even the waiting rooms are divided by class (and sometimes gender).

Second Class is a fairly horrifying prospect to the foreign traveler, at least for distances of any length. If the train is not a particularly popular one, however, Second Class can be quite comfortable, and offers the very best travel companions–friendly, down-to-earth and interactive. (Our very first time in an Indian railway station, we saw an extremely overcrowded Second Class car roll in, and were horrified, until we realized that we had better tic kets, that those were the conditions we would have to face.)

Queueing for a seat in Second Class

Sometimes, plenty of room (and can always lay on the luggage rack, if not)

As long as it’s not too hot, Sleeper class is a good way to go, with windows that open and just as much room as AC 3 Tier, at less than half the cost (though do keep in mind that Sleeper class can get dusty, especially on desert runs through Rajasthan). Most of the cars on a long distance Indian train (other than the special Rajdhani trains, which are all AC) are Sleeper class, as this is the way most Indians travel.

If it’s hot, AC 3 Tier is the natural first choice. We think that AC 3 Tier offers great travel companions as well, often middle class Indians traveling with their families or well-educated younger people. Second Class riders may be the most entertaining, but AC 3 Tier riders probably offer the best conversation. AC 3 Tier comes with bedding (clean and comfortable, 2 sheets, a pillow with pillowcase and blanket), unlike Sleeper class, but is otherwise pretty much the same configuration (though with windows that don’t open).

To go a bit more upscale, one can go AC 2 Tier. While AC 2 Tier offers more room (and, sometimes, more privacy in the form of curtains that separate each set of berths), we found that AC 2 Tier is often full of overweight, snoring, middle-aged men traveling for business–our least favorite travel companions.

Finally, AC First, which comes in two- and four-person compartment configurations.



To be honest, AC First is something of a mystery to me. Yes, the first class compartments do offer more room and privacy, but when booking AC First you are not assigned a berth until you show up for the train. This means that you have no control over whether you get a two-person cabin or a four-person cabin, and I’ve even had a three-person party split up between two cabins. I would certainly be willing to pay the >50% premium over AC 2 Tier if I were assured a private cabin for me and my travel companion, but if we end up being stuck with two strangers anyway, what’s the point? Although, I should note, that AC First doesn’t seem to have the problem that AC 2 Tier does–instead of overweight businessmen, you tend to get somewhat wealthier Indians on holiday. Enough about the various classes.

* * *

New Delhi Railway Station

Indian railway stations really deserve a separate post altogether–many horrible and amusing stories come to mind from our travels, the favorite of which is probably standing, right after having arrived on a redeye flight, on a NDLS platform with all sorts of cargo and sadhus performing morning ablutions while looking across the tracks and seeing a bunch of be-suited Indians on their morning commute–but a few things deserve mention. First, many Indian railway stations (especially those in the main cities built during the Raj) are architectural wonders.

Bombay’s Victoria Terminus (CST) and Churchgate (CCG) Stations

Second is the availability of cheap porters (get over any shame and give them some work, and tip well). 15 Rs (0.30 USD) for 40 kilograms–not a bad deal!

Rajput porter at Bombay Central Station (BCT)

On left, a porter at New Delhi Railway Station

Third is the sometimes incredible number of people sleeping in stations awaiting their next train. The first picture is from New Delhi Railway Station, while the second is from Calcutta Sealdah.

Indian railway stations have all the modern conveniences, including urinals, lighting, fan and timetable display.

* * *

I already mentioned the different entertainment provided by one’s carmates, but there are many other ways to entertain yourself on an Indian train than conversation, comfortable sleeping and eating the surprisingly quality meals. The first is, of course, enjoying the outside scenery. Not only are there wonderful natural landscapes, but passing through rural and urban areas one sees all sorts of things that are not otherwise visible (including, especially in the early morning, unfortunately, many people’s rears, as people like to defacate near train tracks, facing away).




And, especially in Second Class, there is also the stream of people walking through the cars to sell and beg. As I did with my China train post of 2008.07.28, a selection of these: Most importantly, chai chai get ’em chai. Every once in a while, you will still see Indian milk tea being sold in disposable clay cups–but plastic is much more common.

Some chaat (snack mix of sorts), freshly assembled

Peanuts, by the weight

Saris

Toys and appliances?

Bootleg DVDs

Now, I may have just called them beggars, but the way that hijra (traditional Indian transgendereds (see post of 2008.08.29)) operate, they’re hardly begging but rather demanding money as if by right. Fear of their powers made nearly everyone we saw give them money, although they often left us alone.

* * *

Before ending this post, it would be negligent of me not to mention that Indian trains are notorious for theft and sexual harrassment. Lock your bags in the area near you or under the bottom bunk, and keep your most important valuables with you in your bunk (and never leave them unattended). On our very first train ride, we met a Canadian couple with a decade of India experience that had some of their most valuable be longings stolen by a well-dressed, articulate man who was “helping” them. (He tried to “help” us, too, but we were luckier.) Also, from what we hear, ifyou’re a woman traveling alone, there is a chance that you’ll wake up with a man’s hand somewhere you really don’t want it to be. Traveling in a higher class probably reduces this risk, but should you find yourself in this situation, be firm and shove away the hand and yell whatever comes to mind as loud as you can.

* * *

To end this post, some pictures from the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Toy Train. The narrow gauge train that goes up to Darjeeling is one of three famous hill station trains, the others being to Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and Ooty in Tamil Nadu. One of the daily Darjeeling runs is by steam and a charming (if slow) experience. (I should note that I found the second class seats on the Shimla train almost unbearably crowded for the five/six hour ride.)


* * *

Please note that this post focuses mainly on long-distance trains. On shorter daytime routes, such as that from Delhi to Agra, or suburban/commuter trains, there is a different arrangement of classes (generally, any class is fine). I will discuss the chaos of the Bombay suburban rail in a future post.

* * *

Awaiting the train at Delhi Cantonment (DEC)

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India

What Things Cost in India

As I remarked in my post of 2008.12.18, some poor countries have the benefit of having a dynamic market for goods and services, where even the relatively poor can afford a great deal of market products, while many of the poorest countries suffer from a near total lack, in both supply and demand, of affordable consumer goods and services. India definitely belongs in the former category. Whether it’s because of the unusually large size of the country as a whole and its growing role in the international economy, or more likely the well-established and growing middle class, who are educated and have a place in the formal market economy, India is, both for the traveler and for the local, I believe, one of the most affordable countries in the world.

India is crazy cheap. Quality generally may not be as high as Thailand or Bali–where even quite cheap food and lodging can be truly first rate, even by international standards–but prices get even lower on the bottom end than those countries, while still well satisfying minimal expectations of hygiene, comfort and taste.

Some examples of prices in India:

Subway, Delhi – 6-9 Rs (USD 0.12-0.18)
Cycle rickshaw, Old Delhi – 15 Rs (USD 0.30)
Car hire for a day – 700-900 Rs (USD 15-20)
Taxi to Delhi airport – 250 Rs (USD 5), or twice as expensive in a radio taxi
Train from Delhi to Varanasi in 3 Tier AC – 861 Rs (USD 18)

Streetside somosa in a small town – 1-2 Rs (USD 0.02-0.04)
Upscale thali – 100 Rs (USD 2)
A dish at Khyber, an excellent high end Bombay restaurant – 300 Rs (USD 6)
Bottle of soda in a shop – 12 Rs (USD 0.25)

Cheap but clean room with bath in a smaller town – 150 Rs (USD 3)
Reasonably comfortable hotel with AC, etc., in Delhi – 1400 Rs (USD 28), in Fatehpur Sikri – 650 Rs (USD 14)

Qutb Minar admission – 250 Rs (USD 5) for foreigners, 10 Rs (USD 0.20) for Indians
Taj Mahal admission – 750 Rs (USD 15) for foreigners, 20 Rs (USD 0.40) for Indians

On foreigner pricing for admissions, see my post of 2008.07.24.

Categories
India photo religion

Muslim Varanasi

Alamgir Mosque, rising above the ghats on the right. The mosque is said to have been built by Aurangzeb on the site of a former Hindu temple and so is a point of contention–police guard the building against attacks. The minarets have been shortened in order to reduce the building’s profile.

Varanasi is of course one of Hinduism’s holiest cities, and so nearly all of a visitor’s time in Varnasi is spent in marvel at the Hindu activity in the city–navigating the chaos surrounding the Golden Temple, watching the morning bathers on the ghats and listening to the nightly puja. Stay for slightly longer in Varanasi, however, and one quickly comes to realize that the city also has a substantial Muslim population (one estimate is one third of the city). Muslims can be seen around Munshi Ghat and the neighborhood nearby as well as in other distinct Muslim neighborhoods not far from the Hindu core of the city. Given the general theme of our trip, we wanted to seek out the Muslim population of Varanasi, and so spent an entertaining afternoon chasing skullcaps and mosques.

The Muslims of Varanasi are often seen around town, riding rickshaws and at Muslim restaurants.

Munshi ghat

This mosque is not far from the heart of the old city.

Weaving in Varansi–of the famous Baranasi saris–is a Muslim domain, and somewhat inland is an entire Muslim neighborhood dedicated to weaving.



Note the decidedly “Muslim” door–not dissimilar from ones you would find in Central Asia or the Middle East.

The banner advertises a Muslim school named after famous Indian Muslim leader Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University.

As in many other places in India, one is left to wonder what Muslim Varanasi was like before the Partition. Were there substantially more Muslims? Was it the better educated or more well-off who left? Was life more difficult for those who stayed behind, or worse for those who left? Muslim India, and therefore India as a whole, is in many ways only a fragment of what it was, because it was so abruptly and cruelly divided. What would peaceful coexistence, if possible, have looked like?

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Shanti Guest House Menu

We do consider ourselves backpackers, but we usually don’t stay at the most backpacker-y hotels–they just seem too much of a foreigner ghetto, too full, especially in India, of a type of person with whom we just don’t feel like we identify all that well. However, when our lodging plans were seriously disrupted by unforeseen low vacancy rates at certain Varanasi hotels (oh, there is a Varanasi hotel room that is so dear to our hearts, but I dare not identify it here lest it become yet again impossible to obtain in a future Varanasi visit), we ended up at one of Varanasi’s backpacker classics, the Shanti Guest House near Manikarnika (the Burning) Ghat.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with Shanti Guest House. The pricing is competitive, the rooms comfortable if a tiny bit spartan (our first room was essentially windowless–just two laptop-sized openings in the wall for ventilation), the staff quite friendly and totally nonsense-free, and the location fairly prime. A nice feature, although one we did not take advantage of: They offer two free boat rides a day. But to give you a sense of how backpacker-y it is, there is a pool table and travel agency-cum-currency exchange at the rooftop restaurant, and English and Hebrew are the preferred languages of the guests.

But I’m not doing this post to review a hotel that is perfectly acceptable and nothing particularly outstanding. No, I’m writing to review its restaurant, which I found astonishing (although, to be fair, it could be one of many such establishments in India, just the only one we’ve come across). What was so special about this restaurant was the range of cuisine. Not only did it offer the usual, meaning Indian, some Indian-Chinese and some “western” (i.e. Italian/American-Italian) food, but the highly developed menu had extensive offerings in Israeli/Mediterranean (not uncommon in India), Japanese, Korean, Mexican and Spanish food. And I’m not talking just the odd spaghetti and falafel and instant noodles–no. The menu included an extremely wide array of dishes from all of these cuisines, and an excellent range of desserts to boot.

Large JPEGs of the menu: pages 1-2 (breakfast, pancake / deserts, omlates, chips & pakora, burger, cutlets, rolls, soup), pages 3-4 (korean & japanese, mix, pizza, cho-cho rice, bake food, italian food), page 5 (israeli and spanish)

Now, you may wonder about authenticity. In our experience, the hotel batted around 0.500 or so–not too bad, right?

Kimchi-jjigae

Of all of the offerings, Korean was the best. Not only was the Korean food bizarrely authentic (who makes the kimchi?), but the Korean menu was written in Korean script, along with a signed endorsement by the Korean backpacker (a Mr. Park Jong-Ik) who helped put it together. Of all of the Korean dishes, of which I tried several, the most puzzling was the jjajiangmyeon. Now, I know instant Korean-style jjajiang sauce is available but, given the prices, I think Shanti Guest House must make it from scratch–how is this possible?? (Also, given that the restaurant is supposedly open 24 hours, how is there someone always on hand who knows how to cook all of the dishes?)

Shashuka

Next best, I think, was the Israeli/Mediterranean menu. As anyone who has traveled in India knows, the country attracts a huge number of Israeli backpackers. Even outside of the Israeli mini-neighborhoods of cities such as Pushkar and Udaipur, it sometimes feels like the Israelis outnumber all other tourists else combined, which is pretty astonishing considering how small a country Israel is. Anyway, Shanti’s shashuka, an egg-based dish, was just as good as we had in Tel Aviv. The hummus, however, looked very, very odd.

We only tried one Japanese dish, but it didn’t seem promising; the vegetable tempura came out surprisingly like vegetable pakora. Good enough pakora, but pakora (perhaps we shouldn’t have been too surprised).

The oddest? The Mexican menu. Now, they clearly got parts of the idea of an enchilada right, and the final product was tasty enough (and certainly huge enough), but all the Americans who were around, perhaps cruelly, laughed when we told them that what was on our plate was supposed to be an enchilada. There were some Mexican guests in the hotel, too, but we don’t know if they tried the dishes of their homeland, and if so, what they thought.

Enchilada and burrito

Finally, two nice surprises.

The macaroni in cheese sauce, with mushrooms or not, is an incredibly delicious and rich concoction, with a creamy oniony sauce that would be considered tasty anywhere in the world, let alone a Varanasi backpacker restaurant.

And, as any traveler knows, lack of tasty desserts is a great hardship of travel in much of the developing world. Shanti Guest House goes a long way to filling this gap with the “banana filter chocolate with ice cream.” (I imagine they must mean “profiteroles.”) As good as it looks (and better than the also acclaimed “Hello to the Queen”).

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Varanasi

The first impression that a traveler is likely to have of Varanasi, one of the holiest cities of Hinduism and Buddhism, is its filth and congestion. A relatively new traveler to India might wonder, “How do they live like this? If this city is so important, so holy, why isn’t it better maintained?”

But the more time you spend in Varanasi, the more you realize that using normal metrics to appraise a city like Varanasi is totally misguided. Varanasi is a city apart, one that is not bound to rely on such modern banalities as hygiene and plumbing. The beauty of Varanasi, its history and its mystery, are on full display–worship, death (including open-air cremations on the burning ghats), incredibly jubilant festivities. Despite all of the surface grime, the sunrise view of bathing pilgrims and the sight of the ganga aarti puja in the evenings, the ancient and chaotic structure of the old city and its ghats, are so majestic and otherworldly, that one almost wishes one could discard everything else and stay here forever, wondering why in the rest of the world we are always forfeiting history and authenticity for false sheen and the disposable.

Some pictures from perhaps the most exotic city in the world:

Few travel experiences are as rewarding as a morning boat ride on the Ganges.







A reminder that the city is also important for its connections to the life of the Buddha, Thai script and Thai pilgrims.

It is equally hard to tire of the evening puja, with its music and repetition.


Not least, of course, some of India’s most colorful characters and faces.


Travel tip: Oh, do I have some hotel advice for you–but I don’t want to spread the information too widely. If you email me, I’ll let you know!

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Fatehpur Sikri (and Similar Ventures)

Doorway of the Friday Mosque, Fatehpur Sikri

In my previous post, I briefly described the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar, who is widely considered to be the greatest of the Mughals and is celebrated today even in popular culture (as in the 2008 movie Jodhaa Akbar). Akbar’s claims to fame are many–he first incorporated Hindu Rajputana (now Rajasthan) into the Mughal Empire, established a system of taxation that was widely seen as being more fair to the peasantry and instituted a religious tolerance that lasted until the reign of Aurangzeb.

For the tourist, however, and architecturally, Akbar’s greatest contribution is the city of Fatehpur Sikri, some 40 kilometers outside of Agra.

Sikri was the abode of a sufi saint named Salim Chisti, to whom Akbar had prayed for an heir. When a wife bore son Jahangir in 1569, Akbar built a tomb in honor of the saint and decided that he would built a grand new capital for the Mughal Empire in Sikri, to be called Fatehpur Sikri, to rival then capital Agra. In doing this he was following many precedents, particularly in the Muslim world, of new utopian cities built by leaders. (Other Muslim examples that come to mind are Hyderabad in India (started 1589), Babylon in now Iraq and the Medina Azahara near Cordoba, Spain (see below), but I’m sure there are many more.)

The city failed and was abandoned as a capital within fifteen years–perhaps due to the lack of a good water supply–but the remaining buildings are as spectacular and evocative as any in India, and help visitors envision Akbar’s ambitions and idealism.

Fatehpur Sikri’s Friday Mosque is perhaps the grandest in all India, including Delhi’s Friday Mosque. The longer you spend inside, the more you come to appreciate and see around you the Muslim Indian life that continues in Fatehpur Sikri, a continuation of the Mughal tradition despite the recent turbulent centuries and the failure of Akbar’s vision for the city and for India.

The rituals of worship, from ablution to study to prayer are laid before you in as grand a setting as any, but one more intimate and welcoming than Delhi’s Friday Mosque.

At the heart of the mosque is the beautiful marble tomb of sufi saint Salim Chisti. Both Hindu and Muslim worshippers seem to frequent this chapel, to pray for a child just as Akbar himself had, and Sufi qawwali music is often played in the direction of the saint.

Behind the mosque are some of the ruins of Fatehpur Sikri, including a large caravansaray and a tower said to be dedicated to Akbar’s favorite elephant.

In front of the mosque, the ruins of a grand hamam, now a pigsty (literally). From what remains, it seems that the hamam in its day would have matched, in grandeur, any other in the Muslim world.

And perhaps most evocative of all, nearby are the ruins of Akbar’s palace.

A mural said to depict one of Akbar’s wives

The Diwan-i-Khas is said by some to have been designed to allow Akbar to participate in debates with Muslim, Hindu and Christian theologians, with Akbar in the middle.

Walking through the palace in the quiet late afternoon, it is easy to imagine yourself as Akbar, with enough power and ambition to build an entire city, a new religion, an ideal framework for an empire to last the centuries. And, knowing how the city failed so quickly and how later Moghul rulers abandoned Akbar’s ideals and eventually lost control over India, it comes to mind that often the loftiest ambitions are the greatest of follies. India, far from being united, would collapse into three states, with religion to blame.

But even if the Fatehpur Sikri failed as a great capital, it lives on as a peaceful, largely Muslim village sitting underneath the great Akbar ruins.

In alleys and side streets, small glimpses of Mughal grandeur

Entrance into town

Travel tip: When visiting Agra/Fatehpur Sikri, sleep in Fatehpur Sikri at the Hotel Goverdhan, and do your Agra sightseeing by car. As great as Agra’s sights are, the city is crummy and doesn’t come anywhere near matching the relaxation and peek into small town life that Fatehpur Sikri offers. The Goverdhan has good rates and pretty good food, is an ideal base and can help with car hire. Take your time enjoying Fatehpur Sikri and make a special effort to be in the mosque around sunrise and sunst, when the mosque at its most quiet and beautiful (even the boy salesmen will let you be after a while) and you can learn to appreciate the continuity and serenity of life in the town.

Some pictures from Medina Azahara near Cordoba, Spain, also a failed Muslim new capital. Built in the late 10th century by an Umayyad Caliph and destroyed less than a century thereafter, it was said that the city was one of the grandest and most dazzling ever built. It has only recently been excavated.


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Mughal India

To call India a subcontinent feels right not only because the South Asian peninsula forms a tectonic plate that was at one time separate from the greater Asian landmass, and still moves separately from it, pushing up the great Himalayas, but also because it encompasses a level of cultural diversity that justifies a supranational characterization. Perhaps more than other places, India has adopted a stream of outsiders, and outsiders who came to conquer the realm: the “Aryans” who are said to have subdued the existing dark-skinned Dravidians and established the Hindu religion, the Persians and Greeks who controlled the Kingdom of Ghandara in now Pakistan, the Persian-cultural Muslims who established the Sultanate of Delhi and Golconda/Hyderabad (see post of 2008.03.28), and most recently the British who through the East India Company made India part of its great nineteenth century empire. [This is not even including the numerous minority groups who have settled in India–see posts of 2008.03.02 and 2008.05.14 on the Jewish and Parsi communities of Cochin and Bombay.]

The legacies of each of these on what constitutes India, Pakistan and Bangladesh today are many. The “Aryans” (who may be only legendary, as an outside conquering force) provided many of the things that we consider most Indian, such as Hinduism, the caste system and the Sanskrit classics. The earlier Muslim Kingdoms introduced Islam to India and established such great cities as Delhi and Hyderabad. The British are responsible at the same time for Indian unity and the ultimate three-way division of the subcontinent, and arguably for the modern democratic Indian state, including the metropoli of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.

But none of these matches, in the imagination of the tourist, the Mughals, who ruled much of India from 1526 to 1857 and left behind such great monuments of their rule, monuments which are now some of the greatest tourist attractions of India.

Friday Mosque, Delhi

The founder of the Mughal Empire, Babur, came down from Central Asia to India when he was defeated by Uzbek opponents in now Uzbekistan in the early 16th century. He was ethnically Turkic/Mongol–descended from Tamerlane and Genghis Khan (“Mughal” means “Mongol”)–but built up his forces and power through Central Asia and now Afghanistan before taking Delhi and the rest of northern India (not including now Rajasthan) from the Delhi Sultanate which was then dominant in the region.

Sadly, the most famous Babur-built edifice was destroyed in 1992 by a Hindu mob (post to come), because the Babri Mosque was believed by some to have been built on the site of an important Hindu temple that Babur had destroyed. (Babur was also known to demonstrate respect for his subjects, among other examples, telling his son Humayun that he should “refrain from the killing of cows, which will help obtain a hold on the hearts of the people of India.”)

Humayun briefly lost his empire to Muslim rivals and sought refuge in Safavid Iran (see post of 2008.5.19), but returned to India to successfully re-conquer and expand the Mughal Empire.

On right, a mural inside Esfahan’s Chehel Sotun Palace showing Humayun seeking the assistance of the Iranian Safavids, who had their capital at Esfahan

Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, which was built by his widow and is widely considered the model for the Taj Mahal

Humayun’s son Akbar, also (somewhat redundantly) known as Akbar the Great, is considered the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Akbar is famous not only because he was able to greatly expand his realm, in part by establishing suzerainty over the Rajputs in now Rajasthan (for a dramatization of this, see the 2008 film Jodhaa Akbar), but also because he was famous for his tolerance and pan-theism, eventually even trying to create a new religion (focused on himself) that would supplant the subcontinental rivalry between Hinduism and Islam. In keeping with his idealism, he built an entirely new capital for the Mughal Empire at a site just outside the city of Agra, called Fatehpur Sikri (post to come).

Akbar’s tomb at Sikander, near Agra

Akbar’s son, Jahangir, ruled the Mughal Empire from 1603 to 1627 and is most famous for his patronage of the arts and his wife Nur Jahan, or “light of the world,” who held great power in the court.

The Itimad-ud-daulah’s tomb was built for Nur Jahan’s father. Popularly known to Agra tourists as the “Baby Taj,” it is a gem of a building, with exquisite marble inlay.

Jahangir in many ways continued the brand of enlightened idealism fostered by Akbar. At the Red Fort of Agra, Jahangir is said to have installed a golden chain of justice, reaching from inside the court to outside the walls, which could be pulled by anyone in order to have an audience with the Emperor to address an injustice.

Shah Jahan’s rule (1628-58) is the architectural height of the Mughal Empire. He built the Red Fort and Friday Mosque in Delhi–indeed Old Delhi is also called Shahjahanabad–expanded Agra’s Red Fort and also built the most famous tomb in the world for his favorite wife. Shah Jahan is now also buried in the Taj Mahal.

The incomparable Taj Mahal, from the river side

Shah Jahan and Nur Jahan

Shah Jahan’s Red Fort at Delhi. What is now known as Old Delhi is Shah Jahan’s creation, including not only the Red Fort (first two pictures) and Friday Mosque (third picture), but also the city’s walls and gates and the great boulevard now known as the Chandi Chowk.


From Humayun on, Mughal culture was greatly influenced by Iran. Persian design is particularly evident in the Chini Ka Rauza, an Agra tomb for Shah Jahan’s prime minister, who was from Shiraz, Iran.

Ganj Ali Khan Mosque, Kerman, Iran

The last of the great Mughals is known for being the worst, in many senses. Although Aurangzeb, who ruled until 1707, much expanded Mughal control to include most of the Deccan in southern India, and even moved his court south to a new city called Aurangabad, his relatively harsh treatment of non-Muslims and puritanical orthodoxy mark him as a sort of villain (for example, he is said to have banned music in the empire). Perhaps because of the overextension caused by Aurangzeb’s conquests, or the failure of his successors, the Mughal Empire retracted considerably after his rule, dwindling to essentially only Delhi by the time the British rose to power in the subcontinent.

Aurangzeb’s tomb in Khuldabad, near Aurangabad. His piety d
ictated that his tomb be as modest as possible–the relatively simple marble enclosure is a modern addition.

The Bibi Ka Maqbara in Aurangabad, a poor imitation of the Taj Mahal, was built by Aurangzeb’s son as a tribute to his mother and shows the relative lack of attention to the arts during Aurangzeb’s reign compared to his predecessors.

One can detect a certain schizophrenia in the treatment of the Mughal Empire by modern India. To a certain extent, India was de-Muslimized by the Partition–although historical Muslim rule and the present Muslim population are very much core aspects of Indian history and identity, the existence of Pakistan (and to a lesser extent Bangladesh) as an heir to the Muslim tradition accentuates the “foreign” aspects of the Muslim rulers of India, including the Mughals. Indeed, the very name–Mongols–suggests that the Mughals were a foreign power, an alien race exercising dominion over the native (Hindu) Indians. But this is of course inaccurate. First, when the Mughals arrived there was already a substantial and long-established Muslim population in North India. Also, it is important to keep in mind how long the Mughals ruled India–almost three hundred years. Even if the Mughals first thought of themselves as ethnically Turkic or cultural Persian, the fact that they lived in India for hundreds of years, and mixed readily in marriage with local women, meant that they were in actuality as much Indian as not. At a genetic level, Mughal emperors and nobles a couple generations after Babur must have been largely Indian, and the eventual lingua franca of the Mughal Empire, Urdu, is closer to Hindi than it is to Persian or Turkish.