Bye bye Alto!

In the countdown to get to IIM Ahmedabad, I had to let go of my dear Maruti Alto. Bought in 2006, the car was a friend indeed and shared a lot of my first experiences.
I will miss my very first car - Alto, let's go!

Lunch at Gunpowder...

I simply love Hauz khas village for its charming old buildings, alleyways and the little eateries nestled within those buildings. One such surprise is Gunpowder - the Peninsular Kitchen. The little place overlooks the Hauz Khas lake, and specializes in Kerala/Andhra Non veg delicacies.
We chose a sunny Sunday afternoon with Dinesh and Dhanya, our experts with Kerala cuisines. The place is usually crowded so reserving a table in advance helped.
I don't remember most of what we ate, but the food was a bit too spicy for my palate. I loved the Karimeen and the malabar parathas with spiced buttermilk. Appams are soft, fluffy and help balance the spices in the food.
I have heard rave reviews about the Toddy Shop meen curry. There is also a Buff curry for any takers.

My take on Gunpowder would be a 7/10.

Celebrating Delhi...

I have been living in and loving every bit of Delhi since 2001. With just about a month to go before R starts his PGPX at IIM Ahmedabad, I drew up wishlist of places I wanted to visit before we start off a crazy and hopefully adventurous life on campus at the IIM A.

So here it goes (just random, no preferences)

1. Kinari Bazaar, Chandini Chowk
2. Flower market at Hanuman Mandir
3. INA market for all its wonderful fruits and spices
4. Lajpat Nagar, for the home furnishing stores
5. Gunpowder, Hauz Khas village
6. Dilli Haat, for the n'th time
7. GK, M-block market, yet once again for its South Delhi charm
8. Mudpie at the Big Chill Cafe
9. Bengali Market
10. Sarojini Nagar

Out of my 10 Must Go before I Go places, I finally happened to visit the Flower Market at 7 am. The famous Delhi Flower Marketis set up in the wee hours of the morning and is wrapped up before the world wakes up. The Delhi Flower Market is supposedly Asia's largest Cut Flower Market.
For the last 10 years I have only planned to wake up early  and experience the Phool Mandi and its awesomeness. Today I finally did!
The flower market is set up on the pavement opposite the Hanuman Market in Connaught Place. The typical shoppers are small florists, individual buyers, swanky flower boutique owners and the pavement dwellers. The area is horribly crowded and I decided to leave my bag and just pocket some money.

The flowers are fresh and available in every possible color. They come cheaper than one can imagine and a little haggling can get great early morning deals.  The idea is to just ignore the crowd and explore the liliums, orchids, roses, gerberas, oriental lilies, ferns, gladiolas and some artificial flowers. I managed to pick up 20 long stemmed beautiful yellow roses for 50 bucks, 10 deep pink gerberas for 25 bucks, and about 50 stems of rajnigandhas for 50 bucks.
Happy with my morning shopping, I headed back home driving through the green belt of central Delhi, taking in the fragrance of fresh rajnigandhas that filled my car!

Just for the "Good morning" experience, its a must- go!