Eating on the road again

As we race back to what we hope is a normal way of life, one of the pleasures is stopping by the wayside for breakfast. The worst airline in the world, the one named a Gandhian blue, merged flights and put us on one which took us to the destination airport at the crack of dawn. It is our misfortune that it also has the widest network, so that when we go to small places we are forced to choose it. We found our car, and stopped for breakfast half an hour out of the airport.

Two painted attendants welcomes us through the very well decorated doors into a dining area which already had other customers. It turned out that the property was a hotel, and they were getting ready to lay out a buffet breakfast. Did we want that? No, could we look at the menu, please?

Studying these menus is one of the little joys of travel. The girll was clearly kept busy turning out sandwitches. Sometimes they had buttar on them, at other times just plain butter. This was a jem. Allo aloo, do we want you in our paratha? Old hands like us study the menu, put it aside, and then ask the waiter to tell us what is available. Aloo paratha and onion paratha. One of each please, with a bowl of yogurt. And two cups of chai each. Is that the same as a special tea? Ok, then one of that for each of us. The parathas were good.

On the way out we saw a fellow night flier stunned by the daybreak. I gently pushed it aside after taking a couple of photos. Identifying moths is one of the impossible projects that I have in mind. Impossible because of the sheer number of species. Isn’t it interesting that small roadside hotels can afford marble floors?