Glutton For Punishment

One thing that I will always take away from this trip as being singularly and profoundly "Nepali" to me will be Dal Bhat. Dhal Bat is a simple meal that consists of white rice, vegetable curry, some lentil soup (that gets poured on the rice) and something they call pickle but in reality is sort of like a glob of spicy yet slightly sweet something. A couple of times I have identified mango but usually the "pickle" is a blob or chunks of spicy unidentifiable plant matter. It's most commonly served on a partitioned metal plate with a seperate bowl for the lentil soup (dal). This dish is sometimes served with other items such as papadum (a crispy cracker type of fried bread with pepper in it) or you can order a non-vegetarian version for the carnivores.

There are two things that stand out about this meal. The first is that Nepalis seem to eat it like mad. IT's available in every restaurant, any time of the day. In the mountains they would have it at at 10am, then again for a later lunch, and again after that for dinner. Just insane amounts of dal bhat which brings me to the second thing that will make this meal so memorable for me. It's an all you can eat meal. They continue to fill your plate until you forcibly turn them away. If you know me at all I need to be in pain before I do such a thing so many times now I have eaten my way to a near comatose state combined with stomach cramps. I will probably come back home with stretch marks. It's usually quite cheap (last night it was the equivalent of $1.30) and it's damn good most of the time. You should probably just come out to Nepal and try it sometime. It's worth the flight.