What is Pongal? This is a question that  I often get asked in the US. Think of it like an Indian version of Thanksgiving I respond. Come January, and people in different parts of India gear up for a “thanksgiving” celebration that also marks the end of winter. This harvest festival has different names in [...]

You have probably had a paan right after you have had a rich, delicious Indian meal. You may have popped that paan into your mouth automatically & may or may not have wondered about the various flavors that ooze out of that betel leaf. Prof. Pushpesh Pant deconstructs what goes into a paan. The ingredients [...]

This year’s Tiffin Cup award goes to Mint & Mustard headed by chef Anand Joseph George. This award is for the Best South Asian restaurant in UK. George won the award for his dish, which was a pan seared seabass fillets on a bed of potato and curry leaf mash, with a sauce of raw mangoes, ginger and coconut [...]

Mint & Mustard opened last year in Cardiff, Wales and is headed by Anand Joseph George, a truly gifted chef. The restaurant has got some great review and recently  won the annual South Asian Chef competition in Wales and will represent at the national level. My husband and I first met George in Jamavar, the [...]

Later this evening Jet Airway’s maiden flight from San Francisco to Mumbai via Shanghai will take off. At 6 pm this evening Jet Airways has a little do to celebrate this event at the San Francisco Airport. I hope to be there and write a post about it and hopefully take some pictures.  Like I [...]

Naresh Goyal, who heads India’s largest airline was in Silicon Valley a couple of weeks to attend and speak at the TiECon event. I understand that this was his first trip to Silicon Valley after a gap of over 25 years. If you missed reading it, Jet Airway is set to launch its its service [...]

Soukya is a holistic spa located near Bangalore. It is a stone’s thrown from Whitefield, which was once considered as the outskirts of Bangalore. Earlier this year I got to spend a day at Soukya since that is all the time I could afford during my compressed visit to Bangalore and really enjoyed the experience. [...]

Jet Airways, India’s largest airlines, is expanding its footprint in the US and will now be flying out of the West Coast. Starting June 14th 2008 Jet Airways will operate flights out of San Francisco International Airport to Mumbai via Shanghai. What is interesting is that Jet Airways will become the first Indian airline to [...]

I got this email from a reader a few months ago, and I have been meaning to post it but like many things I never got around to doing it. I got this email after the reader saw my videos about New York cabbies, whom I love quizzing and chatting up since they are such [...]

Travel portals are a hot segment in India and have received a good chunk of change from investors. Quite a few of the well-known travel portals are in the airlines and hotel reservation space, but there is another low-hanging fruit in the Indian travel segment that is gaining momentum: bus travel. Every day millions of [...]