Gaya travel guide

Satvik vegetarian

The purist vegetarian cooking at Haridwar and Rishikesh ashrams and guesthouses—no onion, no garlic, made with pure ghee; boiled vegetables, simple dal, rice and roti; the intention is to create a diet conducive to meditation and spiritual practice

Litti chokha

Bihar and Jharkhand's great rustic combination—wheat flour balls stuffed with roasted sattu (bengal gram), cooked directly in fire until charred, split open and drenched in ghee; eaten with smoky mashed potato-tomato-brinjal chokha; perhaps India's most primal meal

Khaja

Odisha and Bihar's festival sweet—thin layers of flaky pastry made from wheat flour and pure ghee, deep-fried and soaked in sugar syrup; the Puri khaja is offered as mahaprasad at the Jagannath temple; the crunchy layers absorb temple blessing according to devotees' belief

Prasad

Temple food elevated to a blessing—sweets, nuts, fruits or cooked food offered to the deity and redistributed to devotees as an act of grace; each temple's prasad is specific: Tirupati's ladoo, Golden Temple's karah prasad, Vrindavan's pedas

Simple thali

The working-class Indian daily meal—dal, one vegetable sabji, rice or roti and pickle; available from Rs 60-100 at every railway station canteen, bus stand dhaba and neighborhood thali restaurant in India; the simplicity is the point and feeding quickly at volume is the function