Nepal is neither a culinary wasteland nor a culinary destination. Thankfully, the food is generally good with the curries being quite delicious most of the time. We were prepared – mentally if not physically – to spend three weeks eating nothing but dahl baat – a traditional Nepali dish of lentil soup, rice, and curried vegetable. We’d heard it was offered on every menu along the way, and that it was the only thing one could get at the higher elevations. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: dahl baat. Thus, we were surprisingly delighted when every stop we made for a meal came with a full menu of options: fried rice, noodles, pizza (don’t even think for a second the pizza had anything to do with italian food save for the name), omelets and pancakes. What?! The higher we climbed, the more we anticipated the onslaught of dahl baat-only days. But nope. Never. Every single menu had a full list of options and each time we saw it we breathed a sigh of relief.
Okay, I’m being a bit unfair to dahl baat. Dahl baat is delicious, and if you actually get lentils in your lentil soup, quite a complete meal. But this westerner is not accustomed to a serving of beans and curry three times a day… nor are the people she shares a room with. An earlier incident in Kathmandu that sent our dear friend running downstairs to ensure we had enough toilet paper to match the ferocity of flatulence following just one dahl baat meal made us hesitant, to say the least, about trying it ever again, let alone three times a day. Of course, we weren’t going to let a lack of food options stop our trek. But you can understand our relief at not being forced into days upon days of dahl baat.
So what did we eat instead? Well, there was the usual, fried rice, chow mein, dumplings, what we consider the safe foods. And, on occasion we tried pizza. Actually, on two occasions. The second one ended in us getting flat bread covered in local mushrooms and ketchup with no cheese. Thankfully anything is delicious after a day of hiking, but it was our second and last Nepali pizza. We enjoyed some yak cheese as we got to higher elevations and had a tasty, if tough, yak steak. I’ll add here that we were pleasantly surprised to not have any stomach problems on the trek, even despite an initial milk tea with milk “straight from the buffalo.” And, I’ll add that it was the best milk tea I’ve had in my life, and I’m pretty sure unpasteurized buffalo milk should start frequenting a Starbuck’s near you any moment now. Breakfasts were complete and generally delicious – eggs, usually a veggie omelet or hard boiled, bread of some kind, and tea or coffee.
We had a couple favorite items too. The first was apple pie, but not just any apple pie; some of them leave a lot to be desired, like the pizzas. These apple pies come from the apple center of the region, Marpha. They’re simply moist, sweet, tart, and deliciously appley with a wonderful crumble top. Apple cakes and chocolate apple cakes were also enjoyed thoroughly in this region, as well as a couple of forgotten nights on apple brandy (really, don’t ask us about those nights. We know nothing.). And what a way to get our fruits! I suppose we could have had more actual apples, but that just seemed a disservice to the bakeries (and distilleries).
Our other favorite, and one we’ll be trying to recreate at home, was Tibetan bread. At its finest, Tibetan bread is a fluffy, moist white bread, with a lightly fried, golden, crispy crust. It’s a bit like biting into a cloud of heaven. I think it’s technically a flatbread, and round in shape, but the best ones rise just a bit to create the softest, most delectable centers. I’d love to show you a picture, but despite us eating one of these almost every day, it never once lasted long enough to be caught on camera. You’ll just have to try the real thing someday.