Four legs good

After a hectic New Delhi morning being kidnapped by rickshaw drivers and having to pay a premium to get where we really wanted to go, we were grateful to plant our starving, weary selves at a table in the Bengal Sweet Centre for a late lunch.

There were mountains of laddu and mysterious sticky, fried confections at the front counter but there was more to this place than just sweets. We figured thali - a platter of six or so curries with sambar, chutney and bread with sweet chai - would do the trick. As we tackled our order, a large, pear-shaped man at a nearby table, whose many chins suggested he was a regular at this shrine to syrup and ghee, struck up a conversation with us. He was working his way through a plate of fine, sweet noodles and wanted to practise his English - which incidentally was better than ours. We were keen to pick his brains about Delhi eateries. We were about to travel around northern India for a fortnight but would have one night in Delhi at the end before flying home and wanted somewhere good for our last Indian meal.

"You must try Karim, down near the Jami Masjid," he said. We'd visited India's largest mosque earlier that day so knew it wasn't too far away. "To say the food there is outstanding is an understatement. Their chicken cooked in butter is out of this world, the deep-fried mutton kebabs are fantastic and you must have the lamb stuffed with chicken, rice, eggs and dried fruit.""Sounds good but do they have any good vegetable dishes?" I asked - foolishly, it turned out. "Oh please! Madame!" he said, looking horrified. Apparently if you want vegetables, Karim is not where you go. And this man was into just two things: sweets and meat.

We consider ourselves omnivorous but didn't really miss meat in India because the vegetarian food was so delectable and satisfying. This is a country that largely eschews meat on religious grounds, although there's no vego directive for Muslims, hence the animal-heavy menu at Karim. There are firm economic reasons for the widespread vegetarianism, too: despite a burgeoning middle class, there are still millions living in poverty and meat is expensive. And given the extraordinary mileage in renewable resources the Indians get from a single, sacred cow - fuel from dried manure, mosquito-repelling house paint from the diluted stuff, yoghurt and cheese from the milk - it would be an extravagance to kill the beast.

We had quickly discovered the varied delights of the vego meal on our first morning when we popped next door from our hotel to an Indian food court for breakfast. It's not as if we'd normally be eating much meat for breakfast anyway, but nor would we have had flaky parathas stuffed with spiced cauliflower and cucumber-yoghurt raita on the side. Around we wandered, having paid about $3 for a token (that's quite a lot for a meal in India) that let us sample whatever we wanted from all the stalls. There were chickpea curries, channa dahl from that most delicious buttery-flavoured lentil, fruit salads, sour eggplant pickles and an intriguing mild stodge, which we think was semolina-based though bready in texture. It soaked up the dahls and was an excellent foil for the intense pickles.

One of the funny things about India is that even in a simple place like this, with basic timber seats and bare tables, there will be a uniformed doorman, with a turban and an exquisitely groomed moustache the size of a banana, ready to greet you. He won't do anything else, just that. Which was a pity because if this guy could have rustled up a cup of coffee or tea we'd have been pals forever.

The one thing our token couldn't get us - despite the large coffee machine behind the counter, the colourful backlit signs for Nescafe and the country's reputation for growing the world's finest teas - was a cup of either. We asked, the staff shrugged in a "we don't get much call for that sort of thing" way and we made do with a fruit shake.

Further in our journey we'd find other places, never anywhere flash, and feast on a couple of vegetable curries, some rice, dahl and maybe puffy naan bread, hot from the tandoor. Then one day in the medieval town of Chanderi we picnicked by the lake and had a welcome break from the wet, cooked diet. Eating from disposable plates made from pressed layers of dried leaves, we each started with a vegetable samosa, half a hard-boiled egg and a vadai, which is like a chewy savoury doughnut made with lentil flour and served with tangy tamarind sauce. In India you don't often find salads or anything else raw in restaurants, which for food safety reasons is probably a good thing. But that day, because we were picnicking, the meal was lightened with fresh guava chutney, chunks of crisp white radish, sweet little oval tomatoes and extraordinary red carrots that had a citrusy smell and a subtle onion-like effect on the eyes.