Help - I seem to have been bitten by the India bug!

I fear I'm becoming another India addict/bore!

I've now been been back in England for 10 days.

I've dreamed about being in India several nights already.

It seems weird not seeing cows, motor rickshaws, overloaded camel carts on the roads round here.

My curryholicism has only got worse - I miss having Indian food for lunch and dinner every day (the other half, curry lover though he is, can't quite face it every night).

I've spent the afternoon in the kitchen making several days' supply of aloo gobi, palak paneer (from a combination of youtube recipes found from a link on IndiaMike) and carrot halwa, and sadly realised that supermarket bought chapatis are infinitely worse than my home-made attempts.

I've set Tivo for all the India related travel shows I can find, and must still be feeling relaxed after my holiday since I don't seem to find the Earthwalkers naive backpacking hippie types as annoying as I did before I went to India!

Any tips from other India-addicts on how to cope between visits/fixes?

there's no cure for it.....you'll just have to come back and live here.....

nope, no cure at all, you just have to hang out here!

since my first trip in 2005, there has not been one day that I do not think of India. sometimes I wake up and India is on the brain....

when I returned from my first trip I literally started planning my second within 30 minutes of landing, and I returned 6 months later.

Yep .... you've got it BAD!

Have you found yourself planning your next 5 trips yet?

Quick! if it wasn't in too private a place have somebody suck out the cultural poison before it becomes systemic & causes a lifetime of pilgrimages to the subcontinent.

heheheh WELCOME to the club!

Why not pop down to your local 'indian' corner shop (since your location is London it shouldn't be too difficult) and ask them if they've got any new dvds....

Then if they have, rent out / buy some super feel good fun bollwood films like say Om shanti Om or Ajaa Nachle... make your fave curry and have an indian film night at home!
beats pizza and blockbuster for sure!

Lovely suggestion, Victoria - or anyhow one that speaks to me!

I like your specific film ideas too. I'd add Bunty Aur Babli, because Bunty and Babli spend most of the movie on a road trip through a lot of India, so you get to see the kinds of things you're missing.

Another evocative one is Life in a Metro, for relatively well-off middle class life in Bombay, again lots of footage of real places. If they're made a little nicer for me to see them onscreen, I'd add, that's fine with me.

Oh one more, Fanaa, the first half in particular where Aamir Khan is a tour guide in Delhi.

See, what I'm hoping to do is to replicate the little things. For instance Nimbu Pani AKA Fresh/Sweet Lime/Lemon Soda. Of course it was way better when I could walk into any restaurant and have somebody else make one for me for all of 60 cents. But I find that, 4 days into this whole silly "America" experiment, it helps a little.

For what it's worth, I'm just squeezing the juice of one lime into a glass of seltzer water. Bonus points would be adding simple syrup, and double points for a salty nimbu pani (which I never developed a taste for anyway).

Before I left, I stocked up on yummy Ayurvedic toiletries -- since that's what I started out using upon arrival, just the smell takes me back.

I'm also thinking of making my own yogurt at home from now on, and possibly making lassi every once in a while.

Other ideas: paint a truck! hang a string of lemons and chili peppers from your doorway! ask your taxi driver to honk the horn more! incorporate long diaphanous scarves into your wardrobe! take bucket baths! get mehendi or try to get someone at your nearest Mandir to tie a rakhi around your wrist!

The first symptoms were on the train my last day in India: feeling slightly tearful at Mathura Junction at the prospect of leaving India; seriously contemplating staying on the train all the way to its final destination of Amritsar, rather than getting off in Delhi in order to fly home.

Thanks for the film suggestions. The thought of a mattar paneer and Jodhaa Akbar night had already crossed my mind. Unfortunately my nearest "Indian" corner shop is Nepali not Indian and has a better stock of obscure spices and stinky mutton than movies. Fortunately easycinema online dvd rental has all the recommended titles.

I am starting to plan the next few trips already - this is normal for me (holiday planning being what keeps me sane during the bad times at work). Maybe head south next time - a quest for masala dosas and rasam, spice gardens, lush greenery and possibly a Kerala backwater cruise (though as a mosquito magnet, I suspect the latter could be a bad move for me). But then my parents said I should go to Shimla, and I didn't make it to Udaipur or Jodhpur and others have recommended Khajuraho and Amritsar and my friends are only in Delhi for another 18 months so I it would be a shame not to go and see them again before they leave ...

Unfortunately, having just started a career break from a stressful job in London with a good salary, in order to find temp work closer to home and get my life back, my budget is more likely to stretch to camping in Dorset than jetting off to India in the near future.

OK, so you're in London?

Depending on what area, and what part of India you need to connect to --- Green Street, East Ham, Ealing Rd Wembley, Southall, Lewisham...

Unfortunately the climate doesn't change in those places.

Nick, you've taken the words out of my mouth!(Only since I don't know London I can't be as specific). Yes, find an Indian community, start going to the shops, get to know the people, and you never know a good Indian friendship might strike up with tasty home cooking! Leading onto shared movie nights etc..

when I'm "homesick" for India I just go to my local South Indian restaurant where all the servers are from Tamil Nadu -- Chennai, Trichy, etc.

I can get my fave meals and practice my tamil there and the guys ask me about my trips, tell me where they're from, make naan just for me, and compliment me on my tamil pronunciation and head wobble...

Spend lot of time here on India Mike
There are lots of so called members only clubs and converted Large pubs in Harrow, Hounslow, Wembley, Kenton, Kingbury etc, some of these places have live music, big screens- normally on Indian Music channels or Cricket and some have great food too, But these places are also addictive

Spent more time on IM chatting and looking through the photo section. I must admit I'm going through the same thing - a weird lost feeling. Only been home about a month although it feels like forever. Got plenty of books to read, Maximum city, India, by V.S.Naipul.
BBC3 I think were repeating Micheal Woods Story of India, which is well worth watching.
Plan your next trip and get saving.

I think thats the one my bro and his partner in Reading boast of. So happy they sounded to have come across such a thing recently

Movies and music is what takes me back to the subcontinent in the split of second. And nothing beats the scenes when I get to see Mumbai in some movies/songs..... like Munna Bhai MBBS. Mera Jahaan (watch it NOW!) video from Taare Zameen Par makes me so freaking mumbai-sick. That taxi, myriad kinds of ppl, street kids, traffic scene, never-ending construction sites, the chaos on the road, BEST, the Gollawala (tho I never try it myself but its sight is very much Indian for me), and of course Nariman Point/Marine Drive. Unfortunately I cannot smell the Mumbai fragrance in this video.

This December when I got out of the airport, hopped into a friends car (who had been waiting for over 1 hour - miscommunication ) the first thing I touched was a pack of garam garam wada paav he had bought specially for me! Sooo considerate. He is the best . I never realized I had not washed my hands after handling my luggage, touching my shoes....do hell...get me my vada paav! And I remember, in all those after-landing-rides from the airport to Chembur I have always looked at the life along and on the streets and soaking all the happenings around as if murmuring "aah ...how nice..beautiful"