At Barbecue Nation..

Bangalore presents innumerable choices for any hungry stomach to wolf down huge quantities of more than edible stuff with a host of restaurants offering sumptuous lunch buffet spreads. This is probably an offshoot of the executive culture that has inbred itself in Bangalore as a result of which, one can find multiple "team outings" and business lunches being carried out.

One such happenstance last week was the lunch outing at Barbecue Nation. It is located at 100ft road in Indiranagar and it boasts of an unlimited supply of barbecued contents throughout the buffet. The restaurant is awfully short on parking space so valet parking is a necessity. The shortfall therein is compensated by the decor and the layout.

The interiors are tastefully done with low key lights throwing soft shadows across. Each table has a centrally located grill which allows for the slow cooking of the barbecued contents that I spoke about.

The course for the day of the allowed for Garlic chicken and Chicken Tandoori among the meats and some Paneer and other roasted vegetables for the greener variety, which were immediately ignored. The steal for the day were the Mutton Kebabs served with just a hint of yogurt which were melt-in-your-mouth fare.

In the face of such an onslaught, the actual buffet spread is easily ignored till its too late. But the buffet is as impressive to say the least. The spread for the day consisted of Dum Biryani, a variety of salads including sea-food salad and Caesar Salad, pastas and traditional Indian spicy curries serving the Chicken-, Mutton- and Fish-hearted.

Note:- I apologize for not taking a peek at the vegetarian section. Please do not count it as an oversight; it was pretty much intentional.

Dessert was a choice of 6; from traditional fare like Gulab Jamuns to stuff like pastries, pineapple pudding to the evergreen vanilla ice cream with sauces ranging from chocolate to mint. All in all, a truly memorable buffet and certainly ranks as one of the better contributors to your round tummy...

Chapter One.Two: à place de la Bastille..

Our first tourist venture was a nightly affair at a very significant Parisian monument that no longer exists. Since by now, we had gotten our hands dirty with the metro, travelling around Paris seemed like second nature for us. The only task that ever remained at any point of time was to locate the nearest terminal and lo, we are off!

A Parisian metro terminal is indicated by a showy board announcing itself or by a circled M sign. Locating the nearest metro terminal involves a peculiar mix of intuition, mobility, keen eyesight and common sense. Keen eyesight and mobility as attributes as pretty much self-explanatory and I won't delve into the common sense aspect of it; a keen sense of direction can help you get yourself to a metro terminal that is closer to your eventual destination that require hopping over numerous hubs.

Some painful hubs like Châtelet-Les-Halles and the main thoroughfares like Gare du Nord sometimes require you to travel as much from one track to the other as you might from a point to point walk. Avoiding the main hubs as much as possible is highly advised. Be prepared with your metro pass while entering one; the ticket barriers are thankfully electronics enabled doing away with any manual intervention.

We stepped out of the metro à la place de la Bastille at about 9 pm into bright daylight. Latitudinally, Paris is probably the northmost I had ever been to; even with the knowledge of
curvatures and daylight savings, it really did seem extremely weird seeing so much light around at a time that is but naturally night!

The place de la Bastille is the site of the famous prison that was stormed and razed (on what is now celebrated as the Bastille Day) and is now commemorated by a July Column in its place. We soaked in the scene for a brief moment of historical nostalgia before we proceeded to the side streets adjoining the square to munch on some local fare. The thumb rule to follow: the more you go away from the main square, the cheaper the fare gets... Of course, the equation is compensated by the quality of the food-stuffs and the ambiance you are presented with..

We, thus, made our first forays into the famed European cobbled and narrow streets. We followed up each narrow street with a narrower one.

The streets adjoining la Place de la Bastille is quite lively at nights, in particular rue de Lappe which is lined with a number of pubs and smoky restaurants. We made our way to one of the pubs and signed-languaged our way to a couple of drinks. Warning: The moment you have decided to sample on a place that is pretty much low scale, plastic money loses all relevance and you better be all pursed up with paper dough.

Dinner was a stand-up affair with crêpes. My choice was a ham- and egg-filled crêpe. The crêpe bears a startling resemblance to the local Indian Dosas; the batter is, however, expertly spread across using a T-shaped apparatus with one end of the lateral T end affixed at the center of the crêpe. No rocket science that. The T, however, allows for a planar crêpe as against a Dosa that assumes layered, concentric circular patterns.

The crêpe is, then, filled with anything that is only limited by the imagination of the chef, as one of us rudely learnt. Sample this on a menu: crêpe à la noix de coco.. Sounds exotic? Trust me, its just dry chapati with dry coconut power...

Note: The image of the Metro board has been sourced from Marta Likes Art-Uh.

Chapter One.One: Daunting Paris..

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Chapter One: à Paris, finally!

The flight from Colombo to Paris passed of without any significant happenings, except for the periodical beggings for non-green food stuffs, which were thankfully answered by the kind stewards and air-hostesses assisting on board the flight. I must say the fish with the meat sauce tastes way lot better once the efforts that went into procuring the item onto my tray table are factored in.

Paris was eventually reached at roughly 1600 hours and we were greeted by some very welcoming anorexic ladies, in cohorts with the multiple business houses that are strewn around Paris. We realized we were in Paris when full length advertisements of fashion houses ranging from Gucci, Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Cardin were thrown at our face.

A couple of immediate Parisian know-hows..

1] All incoming passengers are warned that piracy and counterfeits [of any sort] is a punishable crime in Paris with terms upto rigorous imprisonment. A case in point for all travellers alighting with Aeroboks and Adibas' (and any other phonetic or visual substitutes). Try to sport something more covert or else Paris might not look too beautiful from a small rectangular window

2] English is literally non existent. All boards and signs are in French. Thank God for sign language and intuitive UI!

3] One thumbs up for backpacker and travellers alike: luggage trolleys are free unlike in the US where one must part with a quarter.

Immigration hassles were non-existent and we were soon out facing French (both the language and otherwise). Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG), which is one of the airports that serves Paris and which is the one we landed at, is an important hub for travellers who want branch off from CDG to other parts of Europe and the world. As a result, the terminals boast of a direct link to the TGV (which when translated to English-speak mean Train of Great Speed) and the metro which is a direct link to the heart of the city. For that matter, all airports servicing the European capital cities boast of direct train links with the city heart since they are usually situated miles out of the city.

All that is fine on paper. When you actually get to putting the knowledge to practice, you are welcomed with a language that only you seem not to speak and with people who would not speak the language that you do. Subsequently, we went around the terminal, prompting "Parlez-vous Anglais?" [Do you speak English? Pronounced as "paar-lay vooze aang-lai"] till some kind souls relented and pointed us to the terminal station where we could avail of the metro link to Paris.

The Parisian metro is called Le Metropolitan. It is a complex marriage of SNCF, RATP and RER which are individual rail services servicing different routes with different tariffs. To make life a living heaven, the services can be availed of using a single ticket. Again, that sounds good on paper but put it into practice and things are not so rosy. Le Metropolitan is divided zone-wise and as a result, the tariffs are, also, zone-wise. Hence, procuring a ticket requires you to know the zone-wise architecture, at least of your destination, which is severely handicapped by the language barrier between you and the helpful assistant at the window-counter.

We knew we were in for some fun just getting our way to the hostel.

Chapter Zero.Two: In transit in Srilanka

We were put up for the night at the Tamarind Tree resorts which is hardly 5 km from the airport. The onward flight to Paris was scheduled for 5:30 AM the next day. The route from the airport to the resorts were very deserted and manned at frequent intervals by security personnel with automatic arms on account of the recent militant activities.

The Tamarind Tree, however, painted a very impressive picture. The rooms were in effect arranged into cottages and we were welcomed to a dinner buffet spread that boasted of a wide variety of the ubiquitous South Indian preparations (like Dosas and Chutneys) and other ethnic preparations like the spicy vegetable curry sprinkled with pineapples. The dish starts off fiery till the pineapples sink in to effect.

We were welcomed into our rooms by an enthusiastic bellhop who spoke broken English. He, unfortunately, led us to the wrong rooms which were also thankfully unoccupied. When asked why we could not occupy the rooms that he showed us, he whole-heartedly agreed with us and excused himself so that he could get the keys to the actual rooms. The thankless job of waking us up the next morning in time for the flight was also left to him and he excelled in that as well by repeatedly knocking on the glass door at 4 AM and screaming "Wake up call!".

Even though our Srilankan detour was extremely brief, the resorts were very impressive and I daresay I would like to head there for a full blown trip sometime. Till then, its the spicy pineapples and the hyperactive bellhop who serve the purpose.

Note: The image of the Tamarind Tree resorts has been sourced from India Travelite.

Chapter Zero.One: Onwards to Colombo

The onward flight from Bangalore to Colombo was pretty uneventful, except for a couple of interesting minutes. The immigration officer in Bangalore seemed to be pretty surprised that someone connected with infotech might want to carry out a trip to Europe. And that too, a personal one. We were eventually let through after it was realized that we were neither high on the threat meter, nor did we possess a high entertainment value. Surprising?

One interesting aspect aboard the Sri Lankan flight was the presence of a frontal camera that was being fed into the vanilla airshow, thus rendering us a live take-off and landing view.

Snacks served on the plane were at best commonplace. We were only served sandwiches because the ensuing trip lasted for only an hour. I was served a vegetarian cheese/mint chutney sandwich when there were non-vegetarian options available. This mishap occurred due to the grevious mistake of selecting "Indian-Hindu" cuisine for the reservation. This misfortune was to continue for the remainder of the trip and was to be the cause of many a heated and repeated requests for meatier cuisines.

The pilot announced the landing at Colombo and promptly landed without carrying out the necessary spiral exercises for losing altitude. On arrival, we were pleasantly surprised to notice that the Bandaranaike International Airport was styled on the lines of international transit-based airports like Charles-de-Gaulle and Schiphol, divided into multiple terminals, departure gates and comprehensive television displays of flight schedules.

We were granted transit visas for Srilanka and the airlines put us up for the night. Must say that the first mark that was entrenced upon us of Srilankan was pretty impressive.