My spice odyssey
AS WE followed a path through dense foliage, our guide Lucy pointed to an unfamiliar fruit and whispered: ‘To make natural Viagra, just grate the seed and mix a pinch with saffron and hot milk.’ The magic ingredient turned out to be nutmeg, one of the many spices brought to India by Portuguese traders.
Lucy then warned me away from a bush of thin, red piri piri chillies introduced from Africa. ‘Eat one and you’ll be dancing without music until midnight,’ she giggled.
All around us in the lush Goan spice farm were the ingredients for curries and desserts, most of which I had only seen before in jars in the supermarket. Vanilla orchids originally from Mexico and native peppercorn vines clung to host trees, cocoa pods weighed heavily from low branches, and cinnamon bark gave off a warm aroma when I scratched it.
The former Portuguese colony of Goa was my last stop on a whistlestop, three-centre holiday in India that started in Delhi and took me to Udaipur in Rajasthan, the lake- filled location for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy.
Although the power of the internet means we can plan every detail of our trips better than most travel companies, vast and diverse India remains a chaotic and overwhelming place that could put off even the most experienced independent traveller.
But Preferred Hotels & Resorts provides a solution with its Legend Collection portfolio of independent, characterful hotels – a one- stop shop for a self-made foodie tour. From the Legend list, I selected three hotels from the Leela group that can be relied upon to send drivers to transport guests through the terrifying, traffic between airports and hotels, and on tailormade sightseeing trips.
And I was able to pack my three far-flung destinations into a oneweek tour by flying between them on Jet Airways.
Within a couple of hours of landing in India on an overnight flight, I was swimming in the rooftop infinity pool of the Leela Palace, in the diplomatic enclave of New Delhi, while black kites wheeled above my head.
There was time, too, for a rejuvenating massage in the spa before a gourmet dinner in the hotel’s Jamavar restaurant.
Feeling refreshed the next morning, I was ready to haggle for pashminas, hand-made notebooks and cotton clothes in Dilli Haat craft market before returning to the hotel to learn how to make my favourite dish from the night before – chicken tikka makhani, which is packed with spices.
My next stop was the waterside Leela Palace Hotel in Udaipur, set in tranquil gardens and reached in the most delightful way – by boat across Lake Pichola.
Later, on a sunset cruise, our launch sailed the length of the City
Palace complex, home to the 76th Maharana, and circled the luminous white Lake Garden Palace, a Taj hotel since 1971, but familiar to me as the villain’s lair swum to by Roger Moore disguised as a crocodile in Octopussy. On a distant cliff I could see the Monsoon Palace, another exotic location in the film.
THE f ol l owing day I enjoyed a breakfast of spicy samosas wrapped up in newspaper and a cup of sweet masala chai from a street stall, and then watched orange jalebi sweets – made from chickpea flour and saffron – sizzling in a pan of hot oil.
Our walking tour ended in the busy fruit and vegetable market, where the saris of the stallholders and customers were as bright and colourful as the gorgeous displays of fresh produce.
At the end of the market, our chauffeur- driven Mercedes was waiting to whisk us out of the city. We passed lakes and trees hanging with black bats to the ancient Hindu site of Sas- Bahu, where the only sounds were birds and cicadas. I wandered around the temples adorned with intricate, 11th Century carvings, including erotic scenes, many defaced by prudish Mughals during the 17th Century.
It took two flights to reach Goa, and then an hour’s drive to arrive at the Leela Resort in the quiet south of the small, laid-back state – but it was certainly worth it.
In the low-rise hotel, every room looks out on to a lagoon filled with pink water li lies and dancing dragonflies. The River Sal is situated on one side of the property and the Arabian Sea on the other.
Early the next morning, I walked over a bridge to the yoga pavilion on an island in the middle of one of the lagoons, where I saluted the sun and learnt other stretches with a serene and very flexible teacher.
Exploring farther afield with a guide booked through the hotel, it was a two- hour leisurely drive (with stops for photographs) to Old Goa, the capital of the Portuguese colony from the 16th Century until the 1830s, when the city of 200,000 was abandoned because of the plague. Today some of the original churches are no longer used.
At the plain and simple Our Lady of the Rosaries, there is a turnstile at the entrance to the churchyard – not for crowd-control purposes but to prevent cows wandering in.
By contrast, in the magnificent, Basilica of Bom Jesus, I joined the throng craning to see the mortal remains of St Francis Xavier (the first Jesuit missionary) through glass panels in his lofty silver casket on an elaborate plinth.
Two churches later I was starting to flag, but the spice farm tour revived me.
Here, the farm- to- table lunch after my walk tasted all the more delicious for being served among the plants that had yielded the vegetables, nuts and spices for the colourful curries and salads.