Shoppers from all over the Muslim world converge on Souq al-Hamidiyya, in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The shopping street runs from the medieval ramparts of the Old City to the west, all the way under the ruined arch of the temple of Jupiter, to the Umayyad Mosque plaza, 400 meters inwards.

As you walk from the ramparts, tourist souvenirs slowly give way to tacky sexy lingerie. But as you approach the magnificent Umayyad Mosque, the belly-dancing outfits fade away, and  prayer beads and embroidered Qu’rans take their place.

And in the middle of the tin-domed promenade, an unlikely shop attracts record crowds: Bakdash, reknown throughout the Middle East for its amazing arabic ice cream.

Believe the hype: this is, hands down, the best ice cream in the world.

Ten Centuries of Ice Cream

It’s no happenstance that Syrians hold the key to magnificent ice cream. The origins of the dessert can be traced back to the Persian Empire, and the Arabs were the first ones to incorporate milk products into the Persian recipe. As early as the 10th century, ice cream was eaten widely in the city of Damascus, as well as in Baghdad to the east.

The variation known as ‘Arabic ice cream’ differs from Western confections; in addition to fresh cream, the confection contains mastic, a resin native to the region; and sahlab, an extract from the orchid plant.

The traditional method of preparing Arabic ice cream involves churning it with long, heavy paddles, by beating down on them with force.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Once the ice cream has been throroughly beaten into a thick, elastic concoction, one step remains: rolling the ice cream in a mixture of crushed cashew and pistacchio nuts.

Minarets and Ice Cream Cones

The resulting ice cream is the kind you end up obsessing about. I sure do, long after I’ve left Syria. It’s slightly sweet, elastic yet utterly soft. You pick up a spoonful, and the ice melts in your mouth into the complex flavors of fresh cream, mixed with pistacchio and cashew.

Bakdash’s ice cream is one of the dozens of wonders hiding within the maze-like streets of Damascus’s old city, filled with tiny alleys, friendly vendors, coffee and narghile shops, bakeries, and elegant courtyards. It’s a joyful counterpoint to the somber magnificence of its mosques and Medieval stone ramparts.

When you sit at Bakdash’s long common table, you rub shoulders with Arabs and Muslims from all over the world, from young Lebanese fashionistas, to burqa-clad Iranian grandmothers on pilgrimage.

Wherever they are from, whatever brings them to Damascus, they all soon dip their spoons in the icy confection, and when the taste of pistacchio and cream touches their tongue, they all nod in silence.

For the next five minutes, children on a hot damascene day, we are all united in the joy of ice cream.

Where to Go

Bakdash lies on the wide promenade called Souq al-Hamadiyya, which stretches westward from the Umayyad Mosque plaza. Start from the main entrance of the mosque (the one on the west side), and walk west, under the Arch of Jupiter, and through the market. You’ll find Bakdash to your left.

Ice cream at Bakdash comes in either plain or fruit flavor, and both are highly recommended. A bowl of fabulous ice cream will set you back 50 SYP, or roughly $1 USD.

It was Byzantium when the Greeks founded the city in 667 BC. It later became Constantinople, poised at the edge of the Roman Empire, overlooking the Asian shore. Its fall in 1453 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire signaled the end of the Middle Ages, and the city remained firmly in their hands until, nearly five hundred years later, the Arab Revolt destroyed the Ottoman rule from within.

With such history, you wouldn’t be faulted to expect a somber, beautiful city, drenched in history and drama; visit only its historical quarter of Sultanahmet, and that is exactly what you’ll get. But sprawled across on the other side of the Golden Horn lies a more modern, fast-beating heart of Istanbul: one filled with a Balkan energy and friendliness, where good food goes down better with aniseed spirit, and where young Turks live busy, cheerful lives.

This is where Helene and I spent the most of our three weeks in Istanbul: not in the tourist district that lingers in the shadow of the Blue Mosque, but near the vibrant terraces, restaurants and markets of Beyoğlu; thanks to Caroline, a friend from our Shanghai days, who welcomed us into her apartment as if we were family.

Istanbul Days

As we settled into our temporary home in Istanbul, Helene found herself yearning for the simple pleasures of home cooking. And so, every Sunday for the next three weeks, we visited the Beyoğlu market, a sprawling farmers’ market, sprinkled with clothes and home accessories, that stretches all the way down one of Istanbul’s many hills. Here, we haggled over fruits and vegetables, and sampled fresh olives. We bought varieties of cheese, wielding the few mispronounced Turkish words we had managed to grasp.

Even the lure of cafés began to dull as we settled into our rhythm. Soon, I was practicing with Caroline’s Turkish coffeemaker, and working hard to improve my coffee’s foam as Helene drank all the cups I could muster.

Long walks along Istanbul’s main commercial street of Istiklal Caddesi provided us with pleasant afternoons. Istiklal, stretching from Taksim Square to Tünel, is nearly always impossibly crowded, and its side-streets offer dozens of terraces and cafés to while away the hours.

One of our favorite stops was the famous Inci, alleged birthplace of the profiterole, where the chocolate-drenched pastry melts in your mouth.

Istanbul Nights

Istiklal Caddesi might be busy during the day; but when evening comes around, the wide pedestrian street takes on its true purpose, and it soon fills up so completely that you have to shoulder your way past its twisting alleys, filled with diners and revelers.

Our favorite evening stop was Üstad: a locanta, or traditional Turkish restaurant. “Chez Jean-Jacques” is how Caroline called it, due to the maître-d’s resemblance to French singer Jean-Jacques Goldman. “Je suis Jean-Jacques,” he said to introduce himself. And later: “Your second home in Istanbul is here.” From the nose up, he did indeed make a solid Goldman impression, but his warm hospitality and humor were all Turkish.

In Turkey as in most of the Middle East, mezze, appetizer-sized dishes, occupy a central position in the meal. They go together fabulously with rakı (aniseed spirit), so much so that they often become the de-facto meal on a night of drinks. Rakı is drunk diluted with water, and even then it packs a solid punch; fortunately, the savant blend of spices of the mezze, as well as the delicious fresh bread, make it go down easy.

As in many places in Istanbul, Üstad’s service was exemplary, both friendly and efficient, and willing to throw in the occasional gratuity to truly make you feel welcome. “This is the country of service,” Caroline told us. And indeed, the Turks could teach the French a lesson or two about professional courtesy and hospitality.

Istanbul Modern

A lot of travelers visit Istanbul to explore its past; but although the previous centuries have dotted the city with architectural marvels, its present is worth a visit all by itself.

Of all the cities we visited in our world trip so far, Istanbul is the city that made us feel the most at home, whether we were deciding on that week’s supply of olives, or stumbling home after a night on the town. We could imagine ourselves living here, at least for a while, discovering one more café, walking down another sidestreet in search of the perfect döner.

Home, after eight months on the road, turns into an elusive concept; but Istanbul has captured our hearts. And as the saying goes, that’s all the home you need.

Special Thanks

A big thank you to Caroline, who welcomed us into her Beyoğlu apartment for a staggering three weeks, from which we could convince ourselves we were not tourists but residents, at least for a little while.

Thank you also to Romain and Ece, friends of a friend, who showed us a very Turkish welcome and shared with us their passion for local Turkish products.

Where to Go

Istanbul is a fabulous city to explore as a local and not a tourist; if you do not have the benefit of a friend in the city, consider Couchsurfing, as Istanbul features an enthusiastic, friendly, and very active community of couchsurfers. Otherwise, there are numerous hostels near Istiklal, away from the usual tourist ghetto of Sultanahmet. Check out Neverland Hostel, down the hill from the boulevard but in a very interesting neighborhood nonetheless.

Inci can be found on Istiklal Caddesi, past Galatasaray Lisesi towards Taksim. Look for it on the left side of the boulevard as you walk towards Taksim Square; you’ll spot the crowded doorway soon enough.

Üstad lies on the northern side of Istiklal, on Kameriye Sokak. If you meet Jean-Jacques, tell him Daniel and Helene say hello!

Sultanahmet Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey

Greetings from Beirut, Lebanon!

There has been no shortage of great meals and encounters in the last few weeks – quite the contrary. Helene and I have been traveling and enjoying life, and I’m afraid the blog has taken the sidelines.

But don’t despair: further adventures of the Backpack Foodie in Turkey, Syria and Lebanon are coming soon!

I had the immense pleasure of meeting fellow food blogger Ygal Schleifer in Istanbul last week, and we quickly discovered a common passion for simple, local food. Ygal introduced me to the Turkish kaymak, or clotted cream, which we enjoyed on the sidewalk in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş.

Check out the interview with Eurasianet’s Kebabistan that resulted from our meeting!

You’ll find Souq Waqif at the end of the Corniche in the Gulf city of Doha, Qatar. At the edge of the souq, the ultra-sleek skyscrapers of downtown Doha – none of them older than five years – disappear beyond a maze of shops, restaurants, cafés and stalls.

The souq quickly became our favorite hanging out spot during our five-day stay in the State of Qatar. As always, I follow the locals’ lead: I order a bittersweet and dynamite-strong Turkish coffee, and a grape-flavored shisha. The tobacco for the waterpipe soaks in fresh fruit juice, and a café employee sets glowing pieces of wood charcoal on top of the pipe to get the smoke going.

As I chase the sweet bite of the coffee with a whiff of grape smoke, I lean back and watch the Arab world go by.

White and Black

Souq Waqif offers a unique chance to watch Qatari men and women take a stroll and enjoy life. Although the souq attracts its fair share of tourists, it’s nevertheless a favorite hangout spot for the affluent Qatari, who make up a mere 20% of the local population.

Not that they’re hard to spot: all of them, regardless of gender, wear their traditional garbs with ferocious pride. Most of the men wear the thawb, a long white robe, and a white cotton headpiece called the ghuthra, which they keep in place with an igal, a circle of black rope. These traditional clothes are tailor-made, and kept impossibly white and clean; expensive cufflinks adorn the wearer’s wrists.

As for the women, they walk around in the scorching sun wearing the black, loose-fitting abaya dress, with their hair under a veil. Many Qatari women, young and old, choose to wear the niqab as well, a veil that covers all the face except the eyes. Even stranger are the rigid masks some older women elect to wear: with a metallic frame, they would look at home in some inspired funeral masquerade ball.

The Qatari, all in white and black, move through a sea of people from all over the Arab world and beyond, flocking to Qatar looking for work. Qatari teenage girls mingle with fashion-conscious Americans, Arab businessmen, and Nepali service workers.

Sometimes, you catch a glimpse of a Sudanese woman cutting through a group of black-clad Qatari, and the impossible colors of her hijab breaks through the dark like a flare of color in the night.

Beyond the Veil

It takes a few hours dragging on the grape accents of a shisha to begin to understand the deception that has been wrought on us in the West. I quickly learn to appreciate how complex the Gulf culture gets, and how ignorant I am of its intricacies.

The niqab, or face veil, provides the most startling example. It’s perceived status of religious oppression is so reviled in the West, that Belgium and France seek to ban the niqab from all public places. Back in my Canadian province of Quebec, the niqab has triggered deep-seated passions, fueled by media eager to fan any flame that might light a fire under their sales figures.

Yet the women here are anything but oppressed by their traditional dress. They walk around the souq, their abayas intricate and beautiful in their dark swirls, their eyes shaded by delicate make-up, a Louis Vutton handbag dangling from their arm. The abaya and niqab, more cultural than religious, empower them, affirm their Muslim identity, and mark them as true Qatari, set above the immigrants that toil to serve them. As the ladies trace a line through the shops of the souq, old men push their purchases in a wheelbarrow, ensuring that the women never raise a finger. The choice to wear the niqab belongs to a woman, and is decided between a girl and her mother alone.

Islam itself, so close to its land of birth, presents a quiet, respectful face, worlds away from the violence and misery that saturate Western media. From my vantage point in the souq, I observed a peaceful, multicultural world, where Saudis in black burka stroll alongside Lebanese women in tight jeans.

It’s not a perfect world, but through oil money, Qatar has opened up to the world on its own cultural terms.

The Call to Prayer

As the sun begins to set on Qatar, the heartbreaking beauty of the muezzin‘s call to prayer fills the warmth of the approaching evening. The songs echo throughout the city, from every minaret under the Qatari sky.

I came to Qatar with no preconceptions, and will leave with puzzles. It’s painfully obvious that the story of these pearl divers turned oil magnates has yet to be told without prejudice in my own homeland.

But I am a mere tourist, a bum hanging out in the souq. What do I know?

I have seen through the grape smoke of a shisha, and beyond the superficial lies told to antagonize a rich, complex and fascinating culture. And as the charcoal embers die down atop my shisha, what I really know is that I want to learn more.

Special Thanks

I wish to thank Tracy, our new friend in Doha, for making our stay in Qatar not only possible, but informative and enjoyable. Tracy’s observations on Gulf culture, based on her ten years of living in the region, has provided a much-needed insight, and helped open my eyes to this rich, fascinating culture.

See you in North Africa, Tracy!

A dosa and the spontaneous dance moves of a South Indian waiter led us here to Chennai.

We knew we wanted to visit India as far back as October 2009, when the Diwali lights, Indian sweets and the smiles of Singapore’s Little India unexpectedly charmed us. But it was in Melaka that we encountered the fermented rice pancake that would obsess us all the way from Malaysia to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Five months and three countries later, we finally sat in a South Indian restaurant and ordered a masala dosa. This time, I was the one who felt like dancing.

Due South

The cultural diversity of India boggles the mind. Although they all proudly claim their Indian heritage, the Indians at both ends of the country are separated by language, ethnicity and tradition. As we rode the train slowly from Kolkata in West Bengal to Tamil Nadu’s capital of Chennai, through the cities of Puri, Bhubaneswar, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada, we traveled in four states, each with its own heritage, cuisine and language. As we made our way south along the coast, the languages became undecypherable, the alphabets alien, the people darker-skinned, supple, graceful. The familiar spices of Bengal gave way to a completely new and exciting blend, with frequent accents of chili, aniseed, asa fetida, cinnamon and fenugreek.

Whereas the northern Indians tend to claim Aryan origins, the southern Tamils are fiercely proud of their Dravidian roots. Hindi, the national language of India, is spoken less here than English, and the state boasts its own movie industry, Tollywood, with its own megastars and blockbusters, distinct from Mumbai’s Bollywood.

Hinduism remains the dominant religion in the south, but Christianity has proven a popular alternative to the rigid caste system. Legend holds that Saint Thomas the Apostle himself made his way here after Christ’s death, and was martyred within the limits of what would later become Chennai. Given the extensive history of the Tamil culture, San Tome, as he is known here, must have encountered people, food and traditions that have persisted from long before the birth of Christ to this day.

The Rice People

Given the starkness of the contrast between South India and elsewhere, it’s no wonder their food truly distinguishes itself as well. Whereas Punjabi cuisine in the north favors bread as well as meats in thick sauce, the south shines with its vegetarian cuisine that revolves around rice. The inventiveness of the South’s rice dishes is truly staggering: rice here is eaten in many forms, some barely recognizable, and all delicious, light, healthy and predominantly vegetarian.

The aforementionned dosa is a thin pancake made of fermented rice and lentil, served with sambal, a spicy soup-like sauce, and a thick coconut chutney, with occasional variations including chili or coriander. Dosa come with a variety of stuffings, including onions, coriander, or masala dosa, stuffed with curried potatoes and spices. The dosa in Melaka was good enough to send us dreaming of South India; the ones in Tamil Nadu confirmed the journey had been worthwhile.

Uttapam, a thicker pancake than the dosa, is pan-fried with vegetables and spices. It resembles a small pizza, and its fluffy, crispy thickness highlights the pleasant sourness of the dough.

Idli, a breakfast favorite, consists of small, oval rice flour patties or dumplings, which you dunk in sambal or coconut chutney. It provides a quick, light and tasty meal. The idli itself proves versatile: it can be deep-fried, or chopped and pan-fried in sauces and spices.

A Meal for the Senses

But the most straightforward yet grandiose expression of the South’s love of rice is, without a doubt, the meal.

A South Indian thali, called “meal” in the south, consists of a mountain of white rice, served heaping on a large, green banana leaf. The rice comes with several tasty vegetarian side dishes, ranging from sweet desserts and buttermilk, to fiery mango pickle, sambal, and thick vegetable curries.

As with all South Indian dishes, it is eaten with the right hand, which should be washed both before and after the meal at the sink provided for this purpose. You use this hand to mix the side dishes in your rice, and to scoop the resulting mixture to your lips.

The banana leaf reputedly imbues the rice and side dishes with its own flavor. Combined with the use of one’s right hand, it provides a surprisingly sensual lunch experience, as you get to feel the temperature and texture of your dishes with your fingertips. After a South Indian meal, utensils seem cold, sad instruments meant to segregate you from the true experience of food.

South Indian meals are found everywhere in Tamil Nadu, and at the unbelievable price of approximately 60 cents for an unlimited serving, they’re a popular lunch option for workers over the whole state.

Songs of the South

We spent two weeks in Chennai, our days punctuated by rice. Through our daily visits to Hotel New Suriyas, we befriended the staff who, in an echo of the waiter who first charmed us in Melaka, broke frequently into song, grinned happily at us, or mock-fought between themselves. As we walked around the Muslim area of Triplicane, we chased the choking heat with fresh fruit juices or lassis, retreating to our room until the evening call to prayer announced milder temperatures.

If we are what we eat, then for a time, we too were of the rice people.

And that’s something worth dancing about.

Where to go

“Hotels” (restaurants) serving South Indian meals are ubiquitous throughout the south, in particular in Chennai; but the one meal that drew us back day after day was at Hotel New Suriyas, near the Comfort Hotel in Triplicane. Their idli, dosa and meals are all above-par in my opinion. The restaurant features an adjoining juice bar, where you can enjoy a fabulous mango lassi or butter fruit juice, when in season.

The Honey Bee Bakery & Pizzeria in Puri teems with customers when we get there. It’s fourty degrees outside, though, and the promise of strong coffee, ice-cold gazpacho, and air conditioning is too good to resist. We sit down next to three Hare Krishna devotees in urban clothes, and smile to Wynn, the beaming New Zealand lady whom we keep meeting at every meal.

Helene spent the previous week recovering from stomach problems in Kolkata, so the first time she tried the Honey Bee’s green salad, an intense love affair was born that could only be quenched by two visits a day. When that proved insufficient we got up earlier, so she could squeeze in breakfast and lunch before the bakery closed for the afternoon.

Looking around, it’s obvious it’s gonna take a while before those gazpachos and green salads reach us. You don’t go to the Honey Bee hoping for a quick meal when it’s packed like this. But none of the regulars will tell you that’s a problem. As a matter of fact, it’s something of a feature.

You sit in the window, soak up the air conditioning between two power cuts, read the day’s newspaper, and watch the sacred cows and the bare-chested sadhus walk by outside.

The Rules of Freshness

Tall and supple, with bushy, salt-and-pepper hair and beard, Debu smiles easily as he slips out of the kitchen to take our order. He moves with the slow grace of a man at peace with the world, and his eyes shine when he smiles. When he talks about food, he does so from the heart, and he grows so uncompromising yet so humble that he asks forgiveness for standing by his culinary principles.

“I just cannot prepare things in advance,” says Debu. He will not accept anything short of absolute freshness in the meals he serves in his restaurant. If you order lasagna, he goes way beyond cutting the vegetables on order: he rolls the fresh pasta, too.

Debu’s dedication to freshness shines the brightest in his take on the cold summer soup gazpacho: Debu brings you the soup and the final ingredients separately, so that you may mix them in your soup yourself. Next to your bowl, still cooling down with a purified water ice cube, you get a plate of chopped bell pepper, onion and bread.

In other words, his gazpacho is so fresh, you finish the preparation yourself.

Slow Food

Given Debu’s uncompromising dedication to fresh food, it’s not a surprise that Italian tourists understand him well. When he apologized to Italian visitors for the time it would take to bake their lasagna, they didn’t quite understand the problem. Their country, after all, gave birth to the Slow Food Movement, to which Debu is a natural adherent.

But not everyone feels that way. We witnessed with sadness how some customers seemed oblivious to the charms of the place, and rushed through with an attitude. Given the town’s status as one of India’s four most sacred sites, you’d think the sanctity would rub off on all of its visitors.

If Debu were a chef in a five-star restaurant, he might be afforded the pride and arrogance to dismiss these criticisms. But that’s not Debu’s nature, so he just shakes his head. “I cannot prepare food otherwise. I can’t accept it.” Like an artist driven by passion, he apologizes but refuses to compromise. But at the end of a long day spent in a kitchen exposed directly to the relentless heat of Puri summer, Debu is too sensitive and kind-hearted not to take bad comments pretty hard, sometimes.

It’s made worse when Western tourists think they know better than this gentle Indian man who has not traveled to Europe. One time, a woman got upset when she ordered a moka, and received a stovetop Italian espresso with no trace of chocolate. She began to berate Debu for it, but Italian customers came to the rescue.

“You’re wrong, that’s a moka. We know: we’re Napolitan. That’s what a moka is.”

“This is not a moka! I should know, I work at Starbucks!”

“Starbucks does not make coffee!”

Good Food, Good People

Over the week Helene and I spent in Puri, we spent almost every meal at the Honey Bee. I tried to drag Helene away to other restaurants nearby, but she always pulled us back here, in the land of apple rolls and Italian coffee and green salads. Day by day, we explored Debu’s menu, and were almost always amazed by the results.

Our first surprise happened when Helene ordered a long espresso. Instead of getting an americano like anywhere else in Asia – even in Laos – Dabu nodded his head and brought Helene the real thing for the first time in six months. His coffee – floral and strong – comes from small plantations in the Indian state of Karnataka.

His tomato mozzarella salad features beautiful tomatoes, fresh basil, and a deliciously soft white cheese. “It’s a bit of a cheat,” Debu explained. “It’s not really mozzarella. It’s cow cheese made at high altitude in Darjeeling.” Somehow, that just made the dish and its elegant presentation better.

When I ordered scrambled eggs from the Honey Bee, I just raved about them with Debu. Scrambled eggs are a foodie obsession of mine, and I usually avoid them in restaurants because the cooks never understand how to make them fluffy and a bit humid. Not Debu: he nails it perfectly.

The green salad, Helene’s favorite dish, comes in a baked clay pot, and features either lettuce or spinach, depending on supply. Here, spinach and lettuce are seasonal products, and Debu brings them in from West Bengal when they’re available. His cream of spinach, when available, is a riot of green color and taste.

Day after day, the people who get Debu’s approach come back here. By the time we were ready to leave Puri, going to the Honey Bee Bakery & Pizzeria had morphed into a social event, where we spoke to everyone in the place and smiled at Debu whenever he would peek out of the kitchen. “Where do you think you’re going?” joked a young British tourist as Debu was about to step out after the breakfast rush. “You can’t go! You have to be here to make my lunch in two hours!”

Goodbye Green

On the day we left Puri, I thanked Debu once again for the foodie haven he has created in Puri. Indian food awaited us further down the east coast of India, but Debu’s restaurant gave Helene and me a respite from the heat and the adventure, provided us a home far away from home after six months on the road, where the food was fresh and familiar and delicious.

I know Debu worries about the time it takes to prepare his food. I write this blog post in the hope that he will read it, and look at it when a customer complains it takes too long to make, say, an amazing spinach pizza from scratch. I hope he just lets them walk away, freeing their spot for a soon-to-be regular like I was, who will understand the magic of the Honey Bee.

Keep on taking your time, Debu!

Where to Go

The Honey Bee Bakery & Pizzeria can be found in Puri’s Western tourist area, on Chakra Tirtha (C.T.) Road. The bakery is on the south side of the road, 200m west of Z Hotel.

Puri, in the Indian state of Orissa, is a pleasant town, where many Western visitors spend months at a time, enjoying the slow pace, the beach and the food. Puri is also the host of one of India’s most important pilgrimages sites, Jagannath Temple, a massive temple overflowing with human fervor and devotion a mere five minutes away by auto-rickshaw from the peace of the Honey Bee.

A big thank you to the awesome Off-Track Planet for making me an official Travel Blog Dork! I am honored by the title, and immensely flattered by their words.

Check it out!

Manick boils the fresh buffalo milk in a wok over an open flame. He stirs, thoughtful, coaxing his father’s dessert out of the thickening liquid.

I ask him how he will know when the milk has boiled enough.

“The milk will tell me.”

His laughter, made gravelly by the smoke of biddies, spills from the tea stall, into the chaos of Sudder Street. Manick grins at his own magic.

Chai on the Sidewalk

Helene and I met Manick when we sat on the tired wooden bench of his streetside tea stall, inches away from the endless parade of honking taxi cabs, hawkers, beggars, motorcycles, musical instrument peddlers, rickshaw pullers and the occasional goat herd. Manick’s place stood as an oasis amidst the chaos, and his masala chai – milk tea boiled with cardamom, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and a few other spices – quickly marked the pace of our days.

At any time between 6 AM and 11 PM, walk west on Sudder Street from Mirza Ghalib Street, and you’ll find Manick busy at his stall, a little distance away from the statue of Indira Gandhi. Tall and narrow, Manick stands straight and firm, a biddie at his fingertips. Although he was born in the Indian state of Bihar, he and his wife raised their five daughters and two sons in Kolkata.

Manick is one of thousands of street food vendors and entrepreneurs in Kolkata, providing for his family through hard, unrelenting work, every single day of the year. Manick exhudes quiet strength, dignity, and pride in his work.

One taste of his yogurt, and you understand why. “This is the best yogurt I’ve tasted,” I told Helene the first time I tried it. “Like, ever.”

I told Manick. His eyes lit up.

Making Ghee

Turns out my appreciation of Manick’s yogurt was no coincidence. Manick makes his own yogurt daily from fresh buffalo milk, delivered straight from the countryside. “One hundred percent original,” he said.

To illustrate the quality of his yogurt, Manick set a curd to cook in a wok over coals. While the curd itself turned dark over the flames, a light green layer of fat began to float to the top. This is ghee, used ubiquitously in Indian cooking, and the byproduct of a long chain of transformations of fresh milk. The product is an allegedly healthier form of animal fat that has more in common with the lightness and color of olive oil than butter.

From a seemingly useless blob of yogurt curd, Manick had extracted a vital and healthy ingredient of Indian cooking. But the man was not done yet; he scraped the blackened bottom of his wok, threw in a pinch of cane sugar, and handed this to me on a plate. I tasted milk, and its caramelized sugar content.

Manick grinned. “This is called India!”

Here, nothing goes to waste. People make use of anything, from plastic bags to the mud on the streets. Manick, himself, keeps a bag of dried mud in his stand, from which he bakes his own charcoal ovens. By the time he’s done with them, they have turned red, baked for thousands of hours into the color of bricks.

Buffalo Milk Magic

Not content with making ghee, Manick makes a deal with us. I pay him in advance for two liters of buffalo milk, and return in the evening.

Manick’s father was a sweets maker, and knew no less than fifty-six sweets recipes. This recipe is one of them: with just two liters of buffalo milk, and a few spoonfuls of sugar, Manick sets about invoking some of his father’s magic. He sets the milk to boil slowly over coals.

After an hour of diligent stirring from Manick, his wife and two of his daughters, the milk acquires a shade of yellow. As the water boils away from the milk, the fat, sweet content begins to thicken. When the mixture reaches the consistency of cooking dough, I’m staring in amazement and disbelief.

After spreading it carefully about the wok until it looks like maple sugar, Manick throws in a few tablespoons of cane sugar, and forms the condensed buffalo milk into small, yellow balls.

He calls them amrit laddu, sweets made of amrit. The ambrosial substance is the antithesis of poison: whereas poison kills all those who ingest it, amrit nourishes anyone who feeds from it. Manick is right to call it thus: with a refreshingly low amount of unrefined sugar, even diabetics can enjoy the amazingly complex, delicate and fabulous concoction he has coaxed out of a simple jug of milk.

Sharing the Magic

I can see in his eyes that Manick is proud of his accomplishment. When he shares some with his daughters, they exclaim their enthusiasm. “Mind-blowing! You should be called Sweets-Maker.”

I joke to Manick that he will now have to bake amrit laddu every day for his children. Manick smiles, but shakes his head: he doesn’t have the money to make the sweets his father made on a regular basis. At $2 per pound, and two hours of preparation, they are too costly for him, both in terms of cost and time. And without a restaurant of his own, Manick cannot easily bake the recipe, which he could hope to sell for $8 at the market with some effort. So he goes on making tea, yogurt, chapati, rice and curry on the side of the street, day in and day out.

By financing the milk, I’ve given Manick a rare chance to practice his alchemy of milk. But sitting at his stall, watching his tired but shining eyes, sharing sweets and smiles with Manick and his family, I have no illusion about which of us was the most generous.

“Every man should know everything,” says Manick, who can bake his own ovens, prepare Ayurvedic medicine for his children, and coax amazing sweets out of milk. Watching him sift another pot of chai, I have to agree: my existence is richer for knowing him.

Where to Go

You can find Manick’s stall on Kolkota’s Sudder Street, near the corner of Chowringhee Lane. You will recognize the stand from the words “TEA STALL AND RESTAURANT” painted on the front.

Manick’s stall is unique on a backpacker-heavy street for catering mostly to locals. During mealtimes, you’ll see them crowding the benches, eating rice and vegetable curry.

I’ve seen a few tourists for whom the experience was a tad overwhelming and perhaps too much of India in one sitting. My one advice to you is this: sit on that bench, and stick with it. Once you taste Manick’s food, it will all be worth it. Plus, you often get to chat with local workers on tea break; and at 12 cents per glass of chai, that’s quite the deal.

A middle-aged woman in a saree squats barefoot in the dirt of the sidewalk. She sings to herself softly, in spite of her hard life; the sound barely rises above the roar of cabs and the furor of the city’s life.

Her name is India, and I’m in love with her.

Life in Exuberance

For many travelers coming to India, poverty immediately strikes them and overwhelms their impression of the country. This is especially true of Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta,) whose suffering was painfully highlighted by the work of Mother Teresa. The poverty definitely persists in the West Bengal capital; it stares at you at every street corner, not only in the plight of professional beggars, but also in the short, hard lives of manual workers, rickshaw pullers, and tea stall boys.

But left untold in so many tragic travel tales is the joy and exuberance that pushes through. Look close enough at the teeming mass of humanity, and there is joy poking through the grit. Life shines through in the songs of the people, in the laughter and the smiles that soften faces caked by hardship.

It’s not to say that this joy nullifies the hardness of their lives. If anything, it puts them in sharp contrast. But I cannot overstate the beauty of the joy that resonates through the city, day and night. For the first week, it has made my heart soar and ache at the same time, and I spent long moments with inexplicable tears of joy in my eyes.

Instead of trying – and failing – to capture my impressions of Kolkata in broad, unfair statements, here are some of the moments that touched my heart over the last week. I hope they give you a sense of the spiritual wonder, the joy, the pain and the immensity that is India.

Kolkata Moments

Shared Papad
I drink chai on a bench on the sidewalk, oblivious to the screams of car horns and the bells of rickshaw pullers. A mentally handicapped young man walks by, laughing to himself. A cab driver shares his papad with him, and laughs along; and my heart soars with joy.

The Booksellers
It takes one woman and six men to sell me the book. The woman writes an extensive receipt for five minutes. A man next to her sticks a price tag on the back cover; the next one runs the book to the bagging counter, where number three will bag it; the fourth man, smiling, takes my money to the cashier at the back. The sixth snores softly at the counter, his head against a towering pile of books.

The Goatherds
We follow the goatherds the moment they cross under the elevated overpass. For once, the taxis are quiet, weary of startling the flock as it encircles them. The goatherds stop in front of a decrepit church: one of them milks a goat, storing the milk in a plastic water bottle.

The Exhibit
We sit in the grand hall of Kolkata’s Indian Museum. A woman in a red saree approaches Helene. ‘May I take your picture?’ The woman flashes her cellphone. Later, her husband convinces their daughter to stand between us for another photo. Somehow, surrounded by centuries-old works of art, we have become the main attraction.

Sharing Tea
Judging from the peace in his eyes, the tourist on the next bench has been here a while. A rickshaw puller rings his bell for him. ‘Please give this man a chai,’ says the tourist to the stall owner. The owner throws in a cookie as well. The puller grins, eyes bright; he’s lucked out, for a brief moment in his short, hard life.

A Strange Sight
“Look!!” says the Indian teenager; she laughs and points. Ten amazing things jump at me at once, but I can’t see what she wants me to see. “Look! A foreign woman in a saree!” The entire street, blind to the chaos and wonder of its own existence, laughs and waves as the blonde woman walks by.

A Tea Tray
The tea boy hands me steaming chai in two baked mud cups. I burn my fingers on them, and put them down on a low brick wall. The rickshaw puller tugs at the newspaper under my arm; he helps me prop it up as a tray, then sets me off with a grin and a pat on the back. I spill some tea on my shoes, but Helene gets most of it intact.