Eating across our lands, from Lucknow to Newari Kathmandu

The best meals on our journeys are rarely in hotel restaurants. They are at a family table in Kochi, a kebab counter in Lucknow's old city, a feni distillery in the Goan hills or a Newari courtyard in Patan. We plan around them: a guide who eats where local people eat, a car that waits outside a crowded lane, and lunches booked with families who cook for guests. Hotels still matter, because a good kitchen at breakfast and dinner sets the tone, but the day is built around one or two meals out.

On food safety we keep it simple: eat what is cooked hot in front of you, drink sealed or filtered water, and go easy on raw salads and cut fruit in the first days. Your guide knows which stalls are busy and clean. If you have a sensitive stomach, tell us, and we will lean towards home and hotel kitchens.

• One or two meals out a day, the rest at the hotel
• A food guide in each city, not only a sightseeing guide
• Home lunches booked ahead with families who cook for guests
• Vegetarian, vegan and allergy needs written down for every kitchen

Lucknow was the court city of the Nawabs of Awadh, and its kitchens built a cuisine of slow cooking and fine textures. The dish to know is the galouti kebab, minced meat so soft that, by legend, it was made for a nawab who had lost his teeth. Eat it with a small paratha in Aminabad or Chowk. Nihari, a slow-cooked meat stew, is breakfast in the old city, and Lucknow's biryani is lighter and more fragrant than the southern kinds, cooked dum style under a sealed lid.

In winter, from about November to February, makhan malai is sold at dawn in the old lanes: milk whipped overnight into a saffron froth that vanishes on the tongue. Kulfi with falooda and basket chaat round off an evening. Our four-night Lucknow food journey, from ₹95,000 per person, adds a private Awadhi dinner with a family cook and a morning with chikankari makers.

If your route continues to Varanasi, the mornings there are for kachori sabzi and jalebi near the ghats, and the winter evenings for malaiyyo, the city's own saffron milk froth, followed by a sweet paan from a shop in the old lanes.

Kerala cooks with coconut, curry leaves, black pepper and kudampuli, a smoked fruit that gives fish curry its sourness. The sadya is the great vegetarian feast, more than 20 dishes served in order on a banana leaf, with rice, sambar, avial, thorans, pickles and two or three kinds of payasam; it is at its fullest during Onam in August or September. On the backwaters, eat karimeen pollichathu, pearl spot fish cooked in a banana leaf with masala, and duck roast at a canal-side toddy shop.

Kochi adds its own layers: Syrian Christian beef fry, appam with stew, and Jewish and Portuguese traces in Mattancherry. In the north, Malabar's biryani and Mappila snacks are a different cuisine again. Our eight-night Kerala food and spice trail, from ₹2,45,000 per person, includes a hands-on sadya class and home lunches with Kochi families. Toddy shops are simple and loud, so we choose family-run ones with good kitchens, and non-drinkers eat there happily.

Goan food is two kitchens. The Catholic kitchen, shaped by some 450 years of Portuguese rule, uses palm vinegar, red chillies and pork: vindaloo, sorpotel, chouriço sausage and cafreal chicken. The Hindu Saraswat kitchen is mostly fish and vegetables, with coconut, kokum and tirphal, a spice related to Sichuan pepper. Both meet in the fish curry rice that most Goans eat every day, and in bebinca, a layered coconut and egg pudding baked one layer at a time.

Feni is Goa's spirit, distilled from cashew apples in spring, roughly March to May, and from coconut toddy through the year. A visit to a small distillery in the hills, with a tasting, is the best way to understand it. Poi, the bread sold by bicycle bakers each morning, belongs with everything. Our six-night Goan food and feni trail, from ₹1,85,000 per person, covers the markets of Panjim, Mapusa and Margao and a cooking session in a Salcete family home.

Rajasthan's cooking comes from a dry land: lentils, millet, dried beans and berries, ghee and buttermilk, with few fresh vegetables. Dal baati churma, baked wheat balls with lentils and a sweet crumble, is the classic. Ker sangri, desert berries and beans, and gatte ki sabzi, gram flour dumplings in a yoghurt curry, show how much the desert kitchen does with little. Laal maas, mutton in a fierce red chilli sauce, comes from the hunting traditions of the Rajput courts.

In Jodhpur, eat pyaaz kachori and mirchi vada from the stalls near the clock tower in the morning. In Jaipur, the old sweet shops of Johari Bazaar sell ghewar, a disc of fried batter soaked in syrup, at its best around Teej in the monsoon. Palace hotels such as Umaid Bhawan and Rambagh can arrange a royal-style thali dinner, and some old noble families host dinners in their own homes.

The Newars, the old people of the Kathmandu Valley, have one of the richest food cultures in the Himalaya. Samay baji is the ritual set: beaten rice, spiced grilled buffalo called choila, black soybeans, ginger, a boiled egg and pickles, eaten at festivals and family feasts. Bara, a lentil pancake, and chatamari, a thin rice-flour crêpe with toppings, are everyday snacks in Patan and Bhaktapur. Yomari, a steamed rice dumpling filled with molasses and sesame, is made for the Yomari Punhi full moon, around December.

Bhaktapur is known for juju dhau, the king of curds, set in clay pots and sold around the old squares. For a long, gentle introduction, Krishnarpan at Dwarika's Hotel serves Nepali tasting menus of many courses in a traditional setting. Our five-night Kathmandu Valley short break, from ₹2,20,000 per person, leaves time for both.

Newari meals are often eaten seated low, with dishes served on leaf plates and aila, a strong rice spirit, poured from a long-spouted jug. Many classic dishes use buffalo meat, so tell us if you avoid it; most Newari kitchens make chicken and vegetarian versions too.

Some dishes belong to a season, and we plan food journeys around them. Festival dates follow lunar calendars and move each year, so check current status before you travel.

Ramadan moves about 11 days earlier each year; in 2027 it falls in February and March, among the coolest and best months to be in Lucknow, when the old city stays up late for iftar and the stalls around the Chowk run until the early hours.