Prem my peeps, Prem

More restaurant wisdom and quirks I didn't want to forget to tell you:

From Prem Namaste Cafe in Rishikesh: We cook with love, Serve from the Heat

Ganga View Restaurant: Home cooked food with Love. Includes dishes like Spagetiy and the best milk espresso in town.

From Pushkar's Honey & Spice, from the Thoughts for Food section of the Menu:

Nurture your mind with great thoughts for you will never go higher than you think.
Always remember that the worship of God involves keeping a bouquet of beautiful thoughts constantly blooming and acting accordingly.

And also this: Fiber acts as a broom inside the body by moving the food at such a rate that the potential for problems is minimised. At Honey & Spice we sincerely try to pack our dishes with fibre and nutrients because we realise the importance of a healthy body; it is a temple where the "life force" resides for now.

Honey and Spice made coffee with cinammon and cardamon, as well as coffee with aniseed. In Rishikesh, I'm having a few too many milk espressos (this is what we call 'la broom broom' in Italy). I spent so much time copying quotes from the menu at Honey & Spice (Nourishment for the temple called.....Body) the owner became suspicious.

More bits and soundbites:

Swamiji on the cow munching his lawn every morning: "This our grasscutter. Very cheap."

Swamiji on witnessing Pedro's bike, which had a transistor radio in the shape of a soccer ball attached to the handlebars with a lot of string: "Yes, look. This is technology."

Swamiji on smoking: "If that smoke, nervous system totally bogus."

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A conversation in Pushkar:

Me: What am I eating?

Sarah: I don't know.

Me: That's like the last thing you want to hear in India, hey? Where did you get it?

Sarah: I don't remember.

Me: Do I eat the seed?

Sarah: No! Throw that away.

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FIY: Bat pooh moves stagnation. Did you know that? I didn't know that. Thank you, Jessieji! Apparently you take some of this dried Flying Squirrel feces (Chinese medicine name Wu Ling Zi), boil it and drink the liquid. I can't see from my notes what kind of pollen you mix it with, but I know it's shaken, not stirred.

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A hot bath! A hot bath! My kingdom for a hot bath: These days my kingdom is a dwindling ING Savings Account but still, you should see my bank balance in rupees. It's impressive. The ATM in Pushkar got shut down when a friend of ours took out many rupees. About the equivalent of $600 - yes, this is a lot for anywhere in India but this woman is running a Fair Trade business in Rajasthan. It closed down so she offered the woman behind her in line some rupees to tide her over until someone came to fill up the machine again, which could be anytime really. Did I tell you, there's a big hoopla about counterfeit rupees in India? I now have 3 different ways of confirming whether it's the real deal or not - my favourite is checking to see if Holographic Ghandi is wearing his glasses. If he's not, you've been targeted my friend.

Phir milenge, peeps. Time to go study some Hindi - next lesson, we start grammar. Main khushi hun. I happy am.