A street snack called chaat

March 14, 2005

In Delhi street vendors sell chaat, that is to say snacks consisting of all manner of puffed, roasted and deepfried legumes, grains, pasta products and broken crackers. Nibbles to go, nibbles to take home, nibbles that remind one of the street. A chaat vendor will sell his beans and bobs dry to take home, or if you’ve got the right guy he’ll mix up a little chaat-snack for you right then and there with some very much needed chaat-moisturizer i.e. sweet chilli sauce.

Look at (click on) the image on the left closely and you’ll see the bags in which the chaat is sold folded neatly between the goods. The bags are made of recycled newspaper and other redundant paper glued into bags for packaging.
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debra at 19:27 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us

Delhi street food vendors benchmark good health practices and urban planning

This Delhi street vendor has set up a much needed no smoking zone right in front of his stand (located in front of the state emporia across the street from the Hanuman Mandir near CP). I believe he is selling little packets of flavoured chewing tobacco.

debra at 18:30 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us

In the hood

March 12, 2005

I have arrived safely in Delhi and my students and I are playing a little game in which we hit the streets rather intensively and then find little havens in all different forms to come back to our senses. The streets here are LAUNCH pads, and you need a place, a peace, to come down every now and again. For our little group of 6, the time limit seems to be 45 minutes per jaunt. But we’ve been exceeding this quite a bit.

Tomorrow I’ll try to find an internet cafe where I can upload some of the amazing images. Finding such a place is proving difficult, we may have to resort to moblogging with telephone. Poo.

debra at 15:40 | Comments (1) | post to del.icio.us