To answer your question Dad... Yes, I am getting a tad homesick for certain things! The other day I just didn't want to eat the food I am given on the houseboat... so I didn't. I bought bread and Amul process cheese and ate until my gut was full. I washed it down with a bottle of Thumbs Us (a cheap division of Coca Cola from Atlanta, USA... yet it is the same Rs15 as a bottle of Coke... I should have got the 'real thing'... Thumbs Up should be thumbs down according to my tastebuds... it was more like chilled brown sugar water.) No matter, I was happy with my bread and cheese (which I normally hate at home!). That was lunch. Next came dinner... I wasn't too excited for rice and veggies. I felt like something light... yeah... you'd think rice and veggies is light but not the way they cook it here. Everything drenched in mustard oil. Ugh! I felt like having soup. And so the hunt began. 1... 2.... 3... shops on the lake but none had soup. It was already dark and I almost never venture onto the road when it is dark but it had to be done. And there it was... a package of mixed vegetable Italian Style soup for Rs22. It seemed more like an Army ration soup pouch as it was in a large packet (like most dried soup mixes) but it wasn't dried it was wet and mushy with a few limp noodles that maybe once were in the shape of shells but had lost its shape due to being moist for so long. Thankfully there were directions in English because I wasn't used to this mushy packaged soup (and no one on the HB knew how to make soup). I boiled the water, added the soup and drank. It was disgusting... Italy better stick to pizza!! It just barely tended to my 'need something other than rice' craving! It tasted oddly like the massala mix from the maggi noodles (much like Mr. Noodles and its little packet of spices) but of course there were less noodles. I just may go back to rice and veggies tomorrow!!

ps. I didn't write because I've been in transit... left Kashmir bact to Delhi so don't worry! xo