Walk This Way

- Peter Calder

The real danger of eating out in India is not that you’ll get Delhi belly: it is that you’ll miss out on real local food for fear of getting Delhi belly.

You can avoid illness by following a few simple rules: don’t drink the water, naturally; be fanatical about hand hygiene (wash, rinse with bottled water, and then use hand sanitiser); avoid utensils and eat with your hands, as most of the locals do; and eat little and often, rather than gorging.

The street food is safe, too, if you eat only what you have watched being cooked: ignore the already-cooked delicacies that the flies have started on, and point to the latest to emerge from the ghee or the pot.

But even the canny, hungry visitor can be daunted by the prospect of choosing a place to eat, indoors or out, from the thousands on offer, and may end up settling for bland, tourist-friendly and distinctly Westernised restaurants.