Thai
cuisine draws crowd, tickles Manipuri palate
The food stalls of Manipur
Tourism Festival and Best of Asia Expo 2009 have become the place of delight
for State foodies.
The stalls cater items ranging from largely acclaimed pad thai of Thailand
to our own yerum bora, and well-known Indian kashmiri chaat to Kabui
delightafutpas..
“I’m delighted that the organizers have brought some International
tastes in this festival, it is quite occasional to have Thai foods in our
own State,” said Sumitra, a GP College student.
A team of three chefs are serving the visitors in the Thai food stall. Head
chef Peate said, “Manipur and Thailand are quite similar in food habits,
and I’m satisfied with the type of response we are getting here.”
The Thai team prepares only two dishes every day. And one can have dishes
from beef-topped nam tok to hot dry beef or pork curry panaeng. For heavy
breakfast and lunch, Peate’s team offfers non-veg rice-noodle fried pad
thai and fried rice-chicken khao pad gai.
“The smell is bit different, but the taste is incredible,” said
Ghanashyam, a visitor after having mouthful of hot panaeng. And for those
who want to try some oil-soaked and spicy Indian foods, Deli da Rasoi team
from Guwahati prepares arrays of items of Birayanis to dosas and paw bhajis
and from chats to chops.
Gouranga Das of Deli da Rasoi said, “I come here for the festival with 12
of my subordinates. And I’m satisfied with the number of customers we are
getting in the festival.”
A brisk business of Rs 15,000 per evening is easy, Gouranga added with a
smile. It is his first experience in the Capital and would love to be here
next time as well, Gouranga said.
Apart from all these delights, visitors enjoy their own indigenous items of
singju-boras to afutpa-ataobas in the festival as well.
The eating joints run by the ladies of Keishamthong and Kakhulong Kabui in
two different stalls have all the treats to the palate of State gourmets.
The menu is rather long, but one cannot skip mouth watering marin singju and
oksa afutpa. And a bottle or two of chilled Chakhao or laphoi atingba is
highly suggestible to cool down one’s spine in this scorching season.
For those who want to try more variety of atingbas, Tangkhul food stall is
the right place. The stall has passion fruit and amla varieties, apart from
the rice variety.
The stall also caters pork, beef, chicken and marin curry, all in typical
boiled big-piece Tangkhul style, which melt in the mouth like butter. Even
after having all the above, one cannot ignore yerum bora, khajing bora and
fresh singju, all available in Mutum Asharani’s Meitei food stall.
All her items are served hot and one has to stand a long queue to test her
hand as Asharani said, “A daily sale of Rs 12,000 is easy.”
Pilgrimage
tourism in Sikkim gets a boost
With an aim to give a fillip
to the pilgrimage tourism in Sikkim, a Buddhist hub, the royal Bhutan
Airlines has started a service between Bhutan and West Bengal has decided to
link Sikkim, benefiting the Buddhist Circuit area.
Lukendra Rasaily, General Secretary, Travel Agents Association Of Sikkim (TAAS),
said that with the promotion of the Buddhist Circuit a lot more tourists
would visit Sikkim.
“We used to wait for the spill over of the tourists from Bangkok, Thailand
and South East Asia. But now, we have a Buddhist Circuit here and unlike
South East Asia its full of Buddhists so if we take that market only and
forget about the European sector. A lot of people would be interested in
coming to Sikkim and from there they also get an opportunity to go to Bhutan
which is an exotic place in this region,” said Rasaily.
Jamso, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Druk Air said that the airline is
looking into the possibility of some more routes to link additional places
of Buddhist interest.
“One of the future routes which we are looking at is from Bagdogra Airport
to Kathmandu.. If we can achieve that then we will be able to have the
Buddhist Circuit of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. We are already connected with
Tibet. I think the whole Buddhist Circuit will actually take place,” said
Jamso.Sikkim is known for its pagodas, Gompas and monasteries. Tibetan
Buddhism is hugely prevalent in Sikkim. Buddhism was introduced in Tibet in
the 8th century AD. Later it spread onto Sikkim and other nearby places.
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