“Something spicy.” I was still fairly early into my trip, in Ubud on one of those tourist day tours, when I realised Indonesia hadn't really delivered on one of my expectations. I'd come expecting chilli. Proper chilli. Yet somehow, despite being in Indonesia, I hadn't eaten anything particularly spicy. So when the guy asked what I wanted, I told him exactly that. Something spicy. He gave me tangkleng kambing. It was a rocket. My lips were burning, sweat was pouring off me an

“India is not for beginners.” Someone told me that later in Jaipur when I explained how my first few hours in the country had gone. By then, it was funny. It wasn't funny at three or four in the morning when I was standing in a basement somewhere in Delhi, surrounded by men trying to sell me things I didn't want while another man came down the stairs carrying a cricket bat. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'd wanted to visit India for years. Both of my parents had travelled