Day 45

There is an art to eating sugar cane! Wikki my awesome travel host showed me how ;)

Thoughts: Day 2 in India and on the Earth Diet! Easier than I thought it would be. It seems Indian's eat less procssed foods than Westerners. Today I travelled 7 hours north of Dehli towards the Himalaya's. It was 7 hours of non stop towns, people, traffic, farms! The people here are very raw, earthy, barefoot. My friend Jacques sent me this quote today "Indians don't live in a dream world, they are closer to reality because they walk barefoot most of the time" Carl Jung. Today on the drive I saw how hard people work to get their food. And it may not even be hard to them! It seemed hard work to me because I simply go to the supermarket to buy any food I want, whereas these people are working in fields in the cold/hott, women are walking kilos of food on top of their heads from town to town, the men are digging trenches with heavy tools, I even saw children as young as 6 years old working in the fields and the water ponds collecting seeds. It makes me appreciate the food I have even more. And I can appreciate simple dishes. I learnt that it's amazing to be able to have 4 different foods on the one plate, for example when I was growing up we would have on one plate potatoes, a meat, 2 or 3 types of vegetables and maybe even a pasta. These people have to work their butts off to get that kind of variety! I am appreciating simpleness :)

Challenges: After last nights blog I had 17 comments. It seems that if you display your thoughts to others, you may cause controversary because they are out there, and not every single person is going to agree with them. So I wanted to clear up from what I wrote last night, I was not saying India is bad and that we are superior, and that in my opionion Nobody needs to be fixed, India is not 'bad' and Indians are not bad! What you got from my blog was what you got from my blog because thats what you got from my blog. India is a beautiful country with rich culture and in my experience very polluted. Not blaming it on anyone!!! I was writing what is so in my world. If something I say upsets you, don't take it to seriously, just remember it is only my opions and beliefs that exist in my world. :)))) I do however believe that every human being deserves to breathe fresh air and eat nutritional foods and clean water. That is abundant, and that is not what I am seeing available to the people here. I am seeing food depleted of nutrition because of the environment it is grown in. 

If I meant to say "India is bad and Indian's and India need to be fixed" I would have said "India is bad and Indian's and India need to be fixed". 

Triumphs: Learning how sugar is made! I have always wanted to see how sugar is made from sugar cane! Today my awesome travel guide Wikki took me to a private sugar cane factory. I saw how the sugar cane is compressed and the juice squeezed out of it into a pipe, and the syrup then goes into a huge boiling pot, the syrup then gets dried. Once it's dried it forms a hard yellow crust and thats what is then sent to the bigger factories where it will get processed into white or raw sugar!!! Wikki said they add chemicals and bleach to make it white. 

Tonight I am staying at Patanjali Yogpeeth a yoga center where yoga is compulsory and no alcohol, smoking or meat is allowed!!! Love it :)

At the sugar cane factory!

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Jeera rice (boiled rice with the spice Jeera...mmm love jeera!) with gnei tea. And I bought my travel buddy Wikki a chai tea. Total Cost 50 rupee which is like $1.10 in Australian! 

Lunch: Sugar cane! I tried sugar cane for the first time today! We drove past so many cows that were carting sugar cane to the factories so Wikki pulled over and asked one of guys for one! Oh it was soooo amazing! Sweet and light and refreshing and a taste straight from the earth! And then after we went to a sugar cane factory and I learnt how the first part of sugar is made ;) 
Dinner: 3 different sprouts with tomato and chilli and corriander mmm mmm! 
Dessert: Goji berries. 

Snacks: Some popcorn, a little boy was selling it on the side of the road, I bought one bag off him for 20 rupees (50cents) he was asking 10 rupees for two bags so he was so proud and happy when I gave him 20!!! 

Cost: Popcorn 20 rupee = 50cents. Breakfast rice and tea 50 rupee $1.10. Dinner sprouts 65 rupee = $1.30. 3 litres of water 40 rupee = $1. Total cost today = $3.90!!!

Exercise: Yoga and stretching this morning. Walking in Indiaaaa!