Finally, after experiencing long flights and bumpy local roads, I arrived in the state of Kerala, (the land of the coconut trees), and precisely in Fort Kochin. Fort Kochin is a city which is much quieter than the rest of Kerala, with great sceneries and a great architecture that was first introduced to the southwest of the country from the Portuguese. Even these days, it is remarkable to see the Portuguese influence everywhere, and sometimes, the written stories in the walls make you feel that you are in Spain!

Honey is the name of the first rickshaw driver who took a good care of me and my spiritual sister “Jyoti” on my first day in Kochin. Many native people like to ask questions such as: “Are you married? Do you have a family? How many girlfriends have you had, and so on… So if you are with a friend (especially a woman), it is better to introduce her as your family.

Having the service of the rickshaw or the “tuk-tuk”, as it is called in Thailand, makes life much easier and I was able to go farther than my legs could take me. So, we drove around Fort Kochin on a “tuk-tuk”, and had the chance to see temples, the ginger warehouse, more neighborhoods, many different types of boats, and the famous Chinese fishing Nets where I ate my first local vegetarian “Tali’. Tali is brown rice with many spices and it also includes butter milk and tea…Don’t ask me if I enjoyed it, because I am not really sure about the answer…

Most of us know that Indian people eat with their hands. However, what’s more interesting, and I didn’t know until recently, is that while they are eating they create mudras (hand symbols), and they energize the food this way. Also, eating with hands forces them to take in the right quantity of food for the ideally chewing time, which is estimated from Ayuverda (ancient Vedic nutrition system) to be around 33 times per mouthful.

Even though, eating with fingers make the food much tastier, dealing with the sauce in it, can be a bit messy. It is not so easy for someone to accept it, especially if he/she is a healthy eater and would like everything around him/her to be sterilized and balanced. This little introduction to a traditional Indian restaurant, can really break those walls in your mind, or at least provide you with another way to perceive life.

Food and Traveling in Asia is itself a very nice, long, and delicious story, and besides the fact that, as you all know, back in Paleros we held Macrobiotic Cooking workshops which their philosophy is quite different than the Ayuverdic one and the food very different from the tropical food, I have the feeling that slowly I will be adopting into this other/new reality called India and definitely, I will enjoy her spicy and unique dishes!