So I’m part of another group, started by the “Road Trip Group” organizer’s daughter called the “InterNations New Delhi Women’s Group”. For our first outing, we went to Barbeque Nation, an Indian chain, for lunch. I just read in the Wiki article now that, “Every table has embedded grills giving customers an opportunity to try out their culinary skills with the three-fourth cooked vegetables and meats.”
I, um, totally did not realize the meat on skewers over the grill was 3/4 cooked. I thought it was fully cooked and ready to eat. Maybe the few minutes over the grill were enough? It certainly tasted yummy and I didn’t get ill or anything.
Even a place with “Barbeque” in the name caters to vegetarians. You get skewers with veggies or otherwise vegetarian items on them instead of chicken or fish. And those items have a green handle instead of a brown handle. I’ve said it before, India is a great place to be a vegetarian. I mean, even the commercial for candy makes a point of saying “Snickers is vegetarian” in case of confusion.
Worldly women bonding over barbecue
The gathering was quite diverse. I met women from Iran, Mexico, Switzerland, Russia, and finally another American from Texas. English was our comon language. I feel like, in every other work or leisure group I’m part of, I’m always in the minority, either being a woman or a foreigner or both. Not the case here!
I guess the managers of Barbeque Nation must have thought we were a nifty gathering as well, for they presented us this cake at the end.
“Nice Group”
The restaurant was at Saket mall, so I hung out there for a bit after lunch, had a coffee shake, did some reading, and bought some DVDs. This is the only place I’ve found that sells DVDs in Delhi. Neither of the malls near where I live sell DVDs, though plenty of places sell DVD players. I looked around on the internet and found this site that does a conglomeration of ratings for various recent Bollywood movies, so I picked four and bought ’em. They were $6 each and rated for “All Regions” so maybe they’ll play back home, too? I bought “OMG”, “English Vinglish”, “Barfi”, and “Kahanni”.
Images that do not look like central Delhi
I found this flag, but could not find the Haagen Dazs again.
Waiting for the metro
So a trio of security guards blew their whistles at me when they saw that I was taking the above photograph. They were at the bottom of the stairs, just out of the shot. I don’t think they realized I’d already taken it by the time they whistled, so maybe they thought I was quickly complying. They didn’t follow me or anything to check my camera. I’ve been trying to figure out why they whistled. Maybe they think I could plan something sinister by studying the metro layout? No idea. My camera is not all that fancy. And everyone’s phone has a camera and there are a million people around. I was just being obvious about it.
I did a Google image search of Rajiv Chowk metro station. Yeah, my photo is nothing special.