A Visit to the Mushroom Factory

by Parker Hueser

Day 7 – Chandigarh, India

We had a great sleep in massive beds last night. We could really get used to living in luxury like this. Had breakfast with the family, facebooked for a bit, played a game of pool, and then we all went to the family factory. When we pulled out of his gate, the guard saluted Mann (Arjun’s dad) hardcore military style. It was pretty intense.

RickyTicky

Rick and Arjun

Hats

Got our safety hats on

So we get to the factory and every one of us is greeted at the front door with flowers. We were told later that the flowers were intended for his mom and sisters, it was pretty funny nonetheless. Once inside, we met a white guy named Rick. He’s worked with Mann for two years and worked with potatoes for 38 years. Rick showed us how to make deep-fried spicy cheese ball things. We squish the hell out of some buffalo mozzarella, to get any air bubbles out, and roll it into ball. Then we dip it back and forth between a spicy liquid and a spicy powder then deep fry. They were damn tasty. We ate too many though, it definitely ruined our lunch. Then we checked out the mushroom fields. It was nuts. We went into a dark room with rows upon rows of shelves of bags of shrooms. They were endless. It was like the human fields from the Matrix. And the dark, wet, noisome room had roughly 8 dirty incandescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling, which added to the creepiness of the mushroom fields. We checked out the “sweets” part of the factory afterwards. We sampled some treats but all-in-all, it wasn’t that exciting. 

The next few days were chill; we didn’t do much so I’m not going to document them day by day. Instead I’ll just write about stuff that’s interesting.

Pokemon

Showing Leeche how to play Pokemon

I’ve been playing a lot of Pokemon Diamond lately. My Haunter and Gyarados are at level 35 now. But I’m pretty sure I need to let Graveller hold onto an everstone if I ever want him to evolve into Golem. Now I just gotta figure out how to find an everstone… #PokemonProblems

Ryker and I went for a run today after breakfast. We ran down the little Indian village until the road ran into the river, then we crossed and walked along the rocks and dirt. We came across a small group of children playing cricket and somehow we ended up joining them. Then the bigger kids saw us and we ended up playing cricket with a large group of Indians. We entertained them with juggling and backflips. They took pics with their phones (the older kids had some), but we didn’t bring our cameras with us. We didn’t think we’d use them on our jog. Wrong.

 

I picked up the recipe for Masala Chai from Arjun’s mom. It was too tasty not to!

Masala Chai Recipemasala_chai_recipe2

  • Tea (orange pekoe) whatever
  • Cinnamon
  • Cardamom (big)
  • Cloves
  • Ginger

Boil water and add herbs and spices. Let it infuse in the water for awhile before adding the tea. Really simple, and oh, so delicious.

 

When we left Arjuns manor, we had a 6 hour drive from Paonta Sahib to DLF, which is right outside Delhi. Mann’s got an apartment here so we took up residence in the hotel next door. It was a hella long drive but we got some snacks and just listened to Ryker’s Indy CD on the way. The hotel we’re staying at is very nice. I don’t have any proof of it, but apparently this is a 5-star. I believe it. No pool, but free buffet breakfast everyday till 11 (which they extended for us a couple times) and a decent gym. It has been a few weeks since we did any kind of a workout so the gym was a nice change of pace. The next week is dedicated to the Indian wedding that we’ve been invited to, and the main reason we came to India in the first place.

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