Launchpad and Staycation — New Delhi

A brief hiatus from coffee to share some thoughts about New Delhi.  (For those of you who are wondering about the difference — New Delhi is the capital of India, and is part of a larger municipality known as Delhi.)

Like Jakarta, New Delhi is a city with much to see in its own right.  While one would be hard-pressed to deem it the nicest city in India,  I would argue that is is both overlooked and under-appreciated.  (Again, in a classic example of not listening to “helpful” advice — I’m actually glad that I had several days to enjoy New Delhi and meet some great people!)

A typical tour of Delhi — New or Old, guided or self-explored — will bring you to the following key attractions:

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A peaceful corridor inside the Red Fort.

The Mughal Red Fort (If on your own, get there 30 min before opening rather than baking in the afternoon sun.    Prepare to shove and be shoved — and to be thoroughly irritated by the blatantly discriminatory ticket pricing for foreigners!  Get the audio guide because the signage is not especially helpful.)

Qutab Minar, a UNESCO World Heritage victory minaret in the Afghan style

Humayun’s Tomb, commemorating the second Mughal Emperor of India — and even a tomb dedicated to his favorite barber!   (The steep steps are totally worth it.)

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Humayan’s Tomb — a beautiful place of rest.

Temples/Mosques/Other Houses of Worship:   (I don’t mean to be glib in lumping these all together — but the fact of the matter is that each concierge/tour operator/local will recommend a slightly different combination among the three on the must-see circuit.)

Khan Market:  Khan Market is frequently recommended to tourists as it is relatively tame.  Boasting several nice restaurants, a fun store called Happily Unmarried (which also has a stand in the airport), and tailors / saree makers, it’s a nice enough place to visit, but not necessarily at the top of my list.

There is no shortage of information written about these places.  And they are mostly magnificent.  But what about some of the things that, if not entirely off the beaten track, may not immediately come to mind?

Hauz Khas

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A family enjoys a lazy Sunday afternoon at Hauz Khas.

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The reservoir at pre-dusk.

In Hauz Khas I got a vibe that I seldom felt in New Delhi (or indeed, much of India!).  The vibe?  Chill.  And not just on the narrow strip of bars and restaurants that is the haunt of many an expat, hipster, and hipster expat — but the actual Hauz Khas Complex.  This is where the remains of a fourteenth century village and lush gardens face a beautiful reservoir, the royal tank, and a deer preserve.  In addition to taking in nature and history/architecture — one of the most fun things is people watching.  Hauz Khas also has a number of funky antique shops, international restaurants, good coffee, and even an authentic gelato stand!

Dilli Haat

Chances are you are not going to want to purchase much (if anything) at Dilli Haat.  That said, it is still well worth the trip to this kitschy but entertaining arts & crafts market, designed to replicate a traditional village market (haat).  There are three branches of Dilli Haat that I am aware of — but I recommend going to the original market in INA colony because there is a fantastic food and spice market across the street.

INA Market

INA Market is not for the faint of heart, delicate of nose, or fly-phobic.  And while the name Indian National Army Market may evoke stolid images of commissaries and barracks — INA Market is in fact a lively bazaar offering everything from live fish to imported pasta.  And the spices!  I was in heaven.  Gigantic bags of bright yellow turmeric, green cardamom, black mustard seeds, vibrant red chillies overwhelm the senses.  While every local has their own favorite stall, look for one that grinds and packages spices fresh and on site.

Gourmet Desire

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The feast that we helped to prepare at Gourmet Desire — a combination of Northern and Southern Indian cuisine.

If sightseeing in the baking, and I mean BAKING sun isn’t your thing — New Delhi offers an array of activities to delight even the weariest, heatstroke-prone business traveler.  In my case, this turned out to be a cooking class.  While many five star hotels offer new initiates a variety of options to try their hand at preparing Indian cuisine, my friend P and I decided to try Gourmet Desire, a program run out of the home of Jyoti Agarwal.  Beginning her career as a baker / chocolatier, Jyoti later realized that the many wonderful regional cuisines of India are the perfect way to experience the richness and diversity that is India — all in one place.

Coming up!

New Delhi is also a fantastic launching pad to a number of places with posts forthcoming, including:

  • The Eye-Opening — Amritsar and the India’s Wagah border with Pakistan
  • The Peaceful (aka Royalty for a Weekend) — Udaipur
  • The Obvious — Agra and the Taj Mahal

And many, many more.

ABCD: A History of Coffee (and another India – Indonesia link)

Today was the first day of my three-day professional barista course hosted by ABCD (A Bunch of Caffeine Dealers) in Pasar Santa, a traditional market with a quirky, hipster food-truck culture food court in Jakarta.

I am excited – and ever so slightly intimidated. I am overwhelmed by how little I actually know about coffee. And I find it fascinating.

Coffee originated from Ethiopia around a millennium ago, and is the stuff of legend. Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd, noticed that his goats were unusually energetic after eating the red berries and leaves of an unfamiliar tree. He tried them himself, joined his dancing goats, and became known as the happiest goatherd in the Arab world. The story diverges here depending on who tells it. Kaldi either:

  1. Gave the strange fruit to an imam, who upon tasting it, was repulsed and threw it into the fire whereby it emitted a wonderful aroma, or
  2. Gave it to a passing monk who realized that drying and boiling the berries led to the most wonderful beverage.

Was the origin of coffee one of the first religious disputes? Either way, coffee as we know it today was born.

Whichever version of this myth you believe (if at all), it was Yemeni traders who introduced this strange and wonderful brew to the rest of the world along with the spread of Islam. But the growers were wily, only trading boiled seeds. This made them drinkable, but impossible to transplant. As a result, the successful proliferation of coffee is also due to a history of chicanery, mischief, or just plain thievery. And lots of sex.

In the 1600s, an Indian Sufi named Baba Budan smuggled seven seeds to India from Mocha, and started the global spread of coffee cultivation. (I’m pretty sure that THIS story didn’t involve sex given his presumed holiness!) But more importantly, this led the Dutch to try (and fail) to grow coffee at home, until they found an excellent climate in their colonies in the Indies. And in keeping with my Indo-Indian connection theme, it is interesting to note that it was the Dutch governor in Malabar, India who sent the first seedling to the Dutch governor of Batavia (modern day Jakarta).

Offshoots from these plants were reserved as gifts to close friends of the Dutch, including France’s Louis XIV, who jealously cultivated, picked, and roasted his own private coffee stash personally. When French Naval officer Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu pleaded with King Louis’s court to grant him a few seedlings to grow on the new colony of Martinique, he was denied. However, royal physician Pierre Chirac (any relation to Jacques?!?) was strategically seduced by a woman procured by de Clieu. This unnamed heroine was able to smuggle some seedlings to de Clieu just as he was about to set sail for Martinque. According to some accounts, these seedlings grew to become 90 million trees in the span of 60 years, launching the cultivation of coffee across Latin America.

Meanwhile, amidst a heated border dispute between French and Netherlands Guyana (modern day Surinam), Portuguese colonel Francisco de Melo Palheta was sent as a diplomatic envoy. While little is written about his success or failure to secure the peace, what IS said is that he managed to seduce the wife of the unyielding governor of French Guyana. She smuggled him some seeds hidden in a lavish bouquet of flowers – and the rest is history.

Today, Indian coffee is produced predominantly by small growers in South India (Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu). Their product is low in volume but high in quality –reputed to be the finest shade-grown coffee in the world. (The coffee plant is quite temperamental. Mountain grown coffee gains natural shade from the peak, while plains grown coffee requires the planting of “shade trees” to minimize exposure. )

Indonesia, meanwhile, is the world’s number four coffee producer. Sitting perfectly in the coffee or bean belt, in many ways it is an ideal place to grow coffee. Unfortunately, according to Hendri Kurinawan, our coffee guru at ABCD, Indonesian growers have not been disciplined at segmenting their coffee plants, leading to a challenge for Indonesian growers to provide clearly designated single origin. But distinctly Indonesian coffees include Luwak (yup, the civic poop coffee!) and Timor, a hybrid of Robusta and Arabica beans.

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Map courtesy of National Geographic — thank you for licensing your images for free for non-commercial uses!) The Coffee / Bean Belt stretches equidistant across the equator from the Tropic of Cancer through the Tropic of Capricorn.

Hendri ends today’s class by passionately asking us to take our learnings and become coffee snobs – not in the sense of turning our noses up at coffees we don’t like – but rather to appreciate the many distinct flavors, and demand higher quality from our brewers, who will in turn require higher standards from their roasters, who in turn will only source from reputable, reliable and sustainable growers. I couldn’t agree more – and am excited to see what tomorrow brings.

(Side note – as I write this I am EXTREMELY caffeinated, having completed my first cupping class at ABCD and now sitting in the same Café Anomali sipping a single origin Bali brew. Slowly but surely making my way through their list!)

Bandung: Angklungs, Terraced Rice Paddies, and Relaxation

My first ever weekend trip from Jakarta was to Bandung, the mountainous capital of West Java.  Known alternatively as the Paris of Java, the City of Flowers, or just plain ol’ Bandung, you instantly feel the difference from the hustle and bustle of Jakarta.  Especially when you’ve just sat in traffic for 5 hours to get there.  No wonder it was a favorite retreat for the Dutch, and to this day features some beautiful colonial architecture.

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Our guide has been doing this for a decade. Surely, I said confidently, other people have fallen into muddy, fertilized rice paddies. Oh no, he replied, never before you. . . and even tweeted about it!

While I typically won’t review hotels on this blog — I will write about hotels that I consider to be proper destinations in their own right.  The Padma Hotel in Bandung certainly fills this bill.  Built into a hillside with stunning vistas, one of the first unique features of the hotel is that the floors descend, rather than rise.  You start in the lobby on the top floor (first), and take the elevator down to your room.  (The numbering system is counter-intuitive, so many guests, including us, took many a “scenic route” in the elevators.

The pool is simply stunning — though as one would expect, filled with kids during the weekend.  You can while away your weekend enjoying brunch with a view, lounging at the pool, or trying the many free outbound activities that they have on the premises, from zip lining to rock climbing.

Padma also offers early morning yoga and hikes around the premises, which involve heading up the mountain (gasp, pant) and then cautiously (in the rainy season) making your way down towards the rice paddies.  Or in my case, INTO the rice paddies.  Now the way that I tell the story, the guide, holding out his hand to help me navigate a particularly slippery patch, pulled a little too vigorously and toppled us both in to a *FERTILIZED* and irrigated rice paddy.  My friend Quint, on the other hand, claims that I barreled down the slope at the speed of a freight train, taking down everything in my path — including our guide.  Bless her heart — she ensured that neither of us was injured before laughing hysterically and snapping the photos that you see here.  The WORST part was the trudge back to the hotel, covered in mud, and smelling none-too-fragrant.  After waiting for 3 elevators (attempting to preserve some dignity by riding to our room alone), we caved in and got in with an unlucky family.  They were polite enough not to stare TOO overtly.

It was impossible to look dignified -- so the only options were to laugh or cry. We both chose to laugh.

It was impossible to look dignified — so the only options were to laugh or cry. We both chose to laugh.  Photo:  Quint Simon

There are a couple of nice places to eat around Padma, and the city is a short drive away.  Now many people will tell you that Bandung is Indonesia’s capital of outlet shopping — needless to say that is NOT one of my recommendations . . .

A couple of hours at Saung Angklung Udjo  (Udjo’s House of Angklung) , on the other hand, is one of the most interesting cultural experiences you can have in Indonesia.  The angklung, designated a world heritage item by UNESCO in 2010, is comprised of a bamboo frame which supports 2-4 bamboo tubes.

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Click here to hear Udjo’s angklungs.  (I’ll embed the video once I learn how to use the darn widget!)

At Saung Angklung Udjo, you not only get to enjoy live angklung, wayang golek (puppet) and dance performances, you also get to participate in an audience angklung performance, where you learn to play simple traditional Indonesian melodies, and, in our case, an amazing angklung rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  Sure, parts of it are slightly cheesy.  But your admission fee goes to training youths in the art of the angklung and other Indonesian cultural traditions — and the program is led by Udjo’s spirited young grandson.  The gift shop has the usual kitsch, but a few treasures as well.

Bandung also offers volcanos, hot springs, and several other sights, but my recommendation is to do as the Bandungers (Bandungese?  Bandungians?) do — and take it easy.  Or, if you want someone else to pick up the tab, arrange a corporate retreat there and enjoy the atmosphere!

Coffee and Tea (spa) in Jakarta

The nice thing about quitting your job and taking up blogging is that a lazy afternoon at a coffee shop and a spa can arguably be considered work. (Those of you who are feeling the first twinges of jealousy remember – I have no income!)

Anomali Single Origin Coffee Chart

Choose your own adventure — Anomali maps out the flavor notes of coffee from different parts of Indonesia

I’m sitting in Anomali Coffee on Jl. Senopati. First strike – the wifi doesn’t seem to be working. Boo.   But enjoying a lovely cup of Toraja coffee and a chocolate croissant (4pm is the new 8am folks!), I slowly get over it. Anomali is a great place to take a coffee tour of Indonesia without leaving Jakarta. Slowly but surely I will make my way through their list and report back on my discoveries!

I find delicious irony in the fact that after Anomali I am headed for Tea Spa. For the most part, the world is arguably divided in two – coffee people and tea people. (Has anyone mapped concurrence in people, such as coffee people being predominantly dog people, etc. etc.?)  Of course, loving to be ornery, I consider myself to be both.

TeaspaAdequately amped up on caffeine, I walk the short distance to Tea Spa, on Jl. Gunawarman 9, in the Senopati area of Jakarta.  With a tea room on the ground floor and the spa on the upper level with — you guessed it — all tea treatments and products, it is an unassuming standalone building with a curious combination of exquisite detail (such as crown molding) and mild decay (worn carpets.)  And HORRIBLE elevator music.  Give me gamelan, koto, er hu, ANYTHING but Muzak!  I opt for a three hour signature package which includes a heavenly French massage, a “wrap” which is basically boiling hot padding placed around your stomach and thighs, a body scrub and a mask.  Well worth the IDR 430,000.  Overall, I give Tea Spa a thumbs up.  Good value for money, nice ambiance (please, please change the music though!) and the therapists speak English.  And now I’m going to melt into relaxed puddle. . .

Coming up next: Next week I am excited to be taking a 4 day barista course at ABCD – A Bunch of Caffeine Dealers – at Pasar Santa.  I also plan to review other spas and compile a best of list of both cafes and spas!

Launching Pad: Jakarta Indonesia

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I have been living in Jakarta for the past year, and am truly amazed at how much time people spend in shopping malls!  Jakarta is a great  city to explore, and is an excellent launching point for a number of cities in Java.  Here is a sample of things to come!

Driving Day Trips

  • Jatiluhur Reservoir (relaxing on a boat trip to a floating village)
  • Puncak Pass (meandering through a tea plantation on horseback and enjoying the wild side at Taman Safari)
  • Sukabumi (white knuckled white water rafting)

Train Weekends

  • Bogor (botanical gardens and wayang kulit)
  • Bandung (mountain air and angklungs)
  • Cirebon (batik, mountains, and history)
  • Solo

2-3 Day Plane Weekends

  • Surabaya (history, kratek and bridge to another world)
  • Malang (temples, volcano, and beautiful tree-lined streets)
  • Jogjakarta (history and culture, and your inner hippie)