What to eat in India, and how not to get ill

The illness question, answered properly

Most people have one uncomfortable day on a three-week trip. Most of the time it is not the street food that did it.

The pattern we see in debriefs is dull and consistent. It is the tepid hotel buffet, sitting under a warming lamp since seven in the morning. It is the salad rinsed in water you would not drink. It is the ice in a soft drink at a roadside stop. It is cut fruit from a cart in the afternoon sun. A busy street stall with high turnover, cooking in front of you at a rolling boil, is frequently the safest food you will eat all day, because nothing sits and the customers would not come back if it did.

So the working rules:

• Drink sealed or filtered water and brush your teeth with it. Every hotel we use has filtered or sealed water available.
• Eat it hot, and watch it being cooked. Heat is the whole mechanism.
• Be careful in the first three days with raw salad, chutneys that have been sitting out, cut fruit you did not cut and ice. Your stomach adjusts, and the first 72 hours is when it is least ready.
• Fruit you peel yourself is fine. Bananas, oranges, pomegranate.
• Carry rehydration salts and start them at the first sign rather than the second day. Dehydration is what turns a bad morning into a lost day, particularly in the heat.
• Do not treat mild symptoms with antibiotics on your own. Talk to us on the WhatsApp group and we will get you a doctor the same day if you need one, which is one of the things having our own office in Delhi is actually for.

And one strong recommendation: we put a guided food walk early in almost every India itinerary, usually in Old Delhi. Eating street food alongside someone who knows which stall, which hour and which item is the fastest way we know to lose the fear, and people who do it on day two eat well for the remaining twelve days.

Regional cooking, which is the whole point

There is no such thing as Indian food, in the same way there is no such thing as European food. The country changes cuisine every few hundred miles, and the single biggest upgrade to your trip is ordering the thing the region is actually good at rather than the thing your local restaurant at home taught you to order.

Delhi and the north. Mughlai cooking: slow-braised meat, cream, dried fruit and nuts, and the tandoor. Order butter chicken where it was invented, once, and then move on to the better things: kakori and galouti kebabs, nihari for breakfast if you can find it, korma. The bread is not an afterthought here. Old Delhi is where you eat this, and Delhi in three days says where.

Rajasthan. Desert cooking built for a place with little fresh vegetable: dal baati churma, gatte ki sabzi made with gram flour dumplings, ker sangri from desert beans and berries, and laal maas, a fierce red mutton curry that is the one dish to order in Jodhpur. Rajasthani food is drier, hotter and more interesting than the hotel menus admit.

Punjab and Amritsar. The food most Westerners think is Indian food, at its source and much better: amritsari kulcha, chole, lassi in a glass you cannot lift with one hand. The free kitchen at the Golden Temple feeds tens of thousands a day and eating there is one of the most moving hours in India, not a food stop.

Gujarat. Vegetarian, faintly sweet, and served as a thali that keeps being refilled until you cover the plate with your hand. Also dry: the state does not sell alcohol.

Kolkata and Bengal. Fish, mustard oil, and the best sweets in the country. Mishti doi, a set sweet yoghurt, and rosogolla.

Kerala. Coconut in everything, and the best seafood in India. Meen moilee, a gentle coconut fish curry. Karimeen pollichathu, pearl spot grilled in a banana leaf. Appam, a lacy fermented rice pancake, with stew. Kerala also has the country’s oldest Christian, Muslim and Jewish food traditions layered on top, so the beef fry in a Fort Kochi toddy shop is as local as anything else.

Tamil Nadu. Rice, tamarind, curry leaf, and the whole southern breakfast repertoire: dosa, idli, vada, sambar and coconut chutney, eaten before nine in the morning at a place with a queue. Chettinad cooking inland is the spicy, peppery exception. The banana leaf meal at lunch, refilled endlessly for a couple of dollars, is the best value eating on earth.

Goa. Portuguese lineage, vinegar and chilli: vindaloo made properly, which is nothing like the British version, xacuti, and pork sausage.

How to order well, in five lines

1. Ask what the region is known for and order that, not what you recognise.
2. Order fewer dishes than you think and more bread. Two mains, a dal, a vegetable and bread feeds three people.
3. Say your heat preference at the start, not after the first bite. Kitchens will adjust and are not offended.
4. A thali is the honest way into a new region. Six to twelve small bowls, refilled, for four to seven dollars. It is a menu you can taste rather than read.
5. Eat the breakfast. Indian breakfast is one of the great meals and the hotel omelette is not it.

What is overrated

We would rather say this than have you find out with your own days.

The hotel buffet. The least interesting food in India, and statistically the likeliest to make you unwell. Eat at least half your dinners outside the hotel, and let us book them.

Restaurants with a photo menu and a tour bus outside. The commission economy is real, in India and everywhere in the region. Our drivers are paid a proper day rate so they are not steering you to a lunch stop that pays them, and if a driver anywhere suggests a shopping stop and lunch at the same place, you now know why.

Chai from a station platform in your first 48 hours. It is boiled, so it is usually fine, and we would still start on day three rather than day one.

The idea that you should avoid dairy. Curd is one of the most useful things you can eat in India and it settles a stomach rather than upsetting one. Paneer is not the risk. The risk is temperature and time.

Vegetarians, vegans and other requirements

Vegetarians travel better in India than almost anywhere on earth. Large parts of the country eat no meat at all, and the vegetarian cooking is the main event rather than a substitution. You will eat better than the meat eaters at your table for two weeks.

Vegans need more care but it is workable. Ghee, paneer, curd and milk are everywhere, including in places you would not check. We brief kitchens in writing before you arrive, and southern Indian food is the easiest region by a distance because coconut does the work dairy does in the north.

Allergies. Nuts and dairy are structural in northern cooking rather than optional. Tell us at the first conversation, not in the final email, and we will build the route with it in mind and put it in writing in the local language.

Alcohol. Some states are dry, Gujarat and Bihar among them, and dry days apply nationally around certain holidays. Your itinerary will flag it rather than letting you find out at dinner.

Plan this trip

Tell us how you like to eat and we will build the route around it, including the food walk we would put on day two. Free, and with no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• India: the complete guide to planning your trip
• India for the first time: a realistic first itinerary
• Delhi in three days, and what to do with the third
• India by food and culture, 13 days
• What we would skip in India
• India, planned by people who are actually there

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