One of my favorite sounds is of the Hindi okay. It sounds like tikke, or tea-keh, and I always hear it along the visual of an aunty’s neck and hand movement.
Don and I went to India on different trips and for different reasons, yet both of our experiences there have increased our understanding of why literacy is so vital. I think travel everywhere will do that, and maybe different places connect with each of us differently.
As for me, I love a good snack! If you’re a snacker too, I think you’ll enjoy this post.
First let’s talk about panipuri. Panipuri is a simple and simply delicious street food you’ll find in India. You will see the fragile ball-shape pastry in glass cases on street-carts, with different sauce offerings and toppings.
Now, Delhi belly doesn’t only happen in Delhi, so if your tummy isn’t quite used to water in foreign lands, you might want to opt for a café panipuri experience.
Putting panipuri together is really fun. You crack the top of the pastry ball gently, fill it with contents of your choice, and eat it up!
I could go on and on about snacks in India. The vibrancy of the colors and flavors is exciting and refreshing, and it just reminds me of food experiences in other places. Although I have yet to travel the world, I have been in enough places to notice that food brings people together. For the moment when hunger is at the forefront of our minds, and that moment when those flavors touch our tastebuds and remind us to be thankful for every morsel we eat…in those moments I think we forget everything else; even if only for a few seconds.
As a storyteller I love reading or making up tales to tell our children while they are eating. I find that in addition to those moments I mentioned above, being engaged in an imaginative story helps them travel with their minds in a way that is tangible through the food they are eating. Sure, they can’t touch the things that we create in the stories, but eating that food together, at the table, or under the tree, or in the car (or any other place of choice) while listening to a story, makes for a uniquely memorable experience.
Sometimes, instead of having a more serious delivery, I choose a more…chewy one, where I eat snacks with our children and make it part of the storytelling itself! I don’t know if it’s that I’m a grown up and it’s surprising to them to see me chew and talk at the same time, or if it’s that I look more relatable because that’s what they like to do too, but they seem to listen especially well. If you haven’t tried this yet, maybe you can give it a shot. Theek hai? Theek hai.
I will leave you with a few photographs of more snacks. Enjoy 🙂 Check us out as we walk in old Ahmedabad in between snacks.
Barefoot Baobab 
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