When I was in India I once ate in a restaurant called the Bon Ape Tit. I had some terrible intestinal troubles which overwhelmed my need to take pictures of the signage. (Despite coming home with a few hundred photos taken over four months, I somehow didn't manage to take enough. See how blogs and digicams have changed our traveller-consciousness?)


This photo still slays me. I'm entering an establishment called the Hot & Stimuliating (sic) Cafe in Darjeeling. Also, I seem to be wearing Hammer pants. My travelling companion, Vicky Lear, took this photo. (Vick, if happen to Google yourself to this post, get in touch! I've still got a killer photo of you wearing a British Airways blanket--peanut-brown, Burberry-tartan-gone-wrong--as a winter coat).

The Hot & Stimulating is perched on a high spot in town with tea gardens visible on the mountains across the valley. The owner, in my memory, looks like a Nepali David Carradine with a fu manchu. I ordered Darjeeling tea. It tasted like shit. Then he served us momos, a Himalayan sort of dumpling--deepening my belief that every human being needs the starchy comfort of a perogy. He didn't speak English very well, but Vicky and I nevertheless tried to explain to him the multiple nuances of the phrase "hot and stimulating." I came away from the experience understanding just how difficult it is to pantomime the words "sexy" and "porn." Oh, yeah, and looking stupid, like every other tourist sent there by the Lonely Planet who has ever attempted same.