Time to say goodbye to India. We’re happy to leave behind the mad traffic that is driving us insane. But we’re sad to leave behind the nice people we met!

Hannu was so happy about the food we had in India and Sri Lanka that a special post had to be done on the topic!

Paratha, malai kofta, biryani, aloo gobi, gobi manchurian, idli.. I had a notebook where I wrote down the names so that some day we could actually know what we were ordering. In the end, a large part of our diet consisted of “thali”: all you can eat feast with a lot of carbs. A plate full of rice with different kind of sauces – some spicy and some spicier, especially in Sri Lanka!

Here are two recipes I will try myself some day when I’m back in the kitchen:

Avocado salad in Sri Lanka: avocado, boiled potato, boiled eggs, lots of onion, tomatoes, salt and black pepper on top.

Coconut chutney in the Andaman Islands: grinned coconut, chopped chili, a bit of ginger, garlic and water mixed together in a blender. Chutney was served as breakfast together with chickpea sauce and local bread chapati. Along came also an omelet, with raw onion and tomato on top. SO GOOD.

It’s almost like in The Beach movie: there is a secret paradise on the island. On our island the secret paradise was a waterfall. Travelers who made it there told us it’s amazing, it’s something they had never seen before. There are stories about crocodiles and leeches. The are rumors that locals are destroying the road leading there, in order to keep the place hidden. But somebody always finds the waterfall, draws a map and hands it to other travelers.

We also set out to find the waterfall. First day in the jungle was difficult, we only found dead ends that lead nowhere. We returned back to the camp. On the second day we found the right path with our bikes, walked in the jungle, crossed two small rivers, got bitten by leeches and finally, the waterfall!