Eating my way round the world.

Looking back, most of the meals I had while I was travelling are a bit of a blur. They are all recorded in my diaries, but there is a limit to how exciting yet another menu and meal alone can be.

(I wasn't always alone - a couple of friends joined me for a while, and I met people along the way to eat with. But many evenings were spent alone.)

I am, now, undaunted by the whole restaurant-on-my-own thing. I always have my diary, and a book to read. Which means I can listen to conversations going on around me and writing them down or, if that is too boring, read my own book. But I scanned too many menus to be surprised any more. I ate fish fresh from the sea in Australia, curries in the backwaters of Kerala, nasi lemak in Malaysia - there was joy in discovering new cuisine but eating out on my own, every evening, became a challenge.

(Could I not cook for myself? Yes, in Australia and New Zealand, when I was in hostels or campsites. But once in Nepal and India I was in hotels, where cooking for myself was impossible.)

However, a few experiences stand out.

One day, in Nepal, Tika (my guide) suggested that his wife, Shobha, walk with us. She was a slight woman with gentle eyes, and endlessly curious about me. I must have passed some sort of test, because she invited me to eat with them that evening. I arrived to find her hunched over an open stove on her rooftop, frying pieces of fish, to go with the rice and spinach and dal. (To think I make a fuss about cooking when people come round - and I have a fridge, and cooker, and a dishwasher.)

We talked about our families, as women do. And suddenly she turned and asked, 'Are you lonely?' 

I was so taken aback I could only answer honestly. 'Sometimes I'm lonely, and sometimes I like having my own way all the time.'

'In that case,' she said, 'you will eat here every night you are in Pokhara.' And I did; she hunched over her little rooftop stove and I ate like a queen.

Shobha is one of the reasons I'm going back to Nepal next year.

Further south, when I stayed in a guesthouse just outside Cochin, in India, I was presented with my own cook. (No, I don't know quite how that happened.) I was given a menu, asked to choose - he would make me anything, he said. Until I suggested samosas.

'They take a ... very ... long time, madam,' he said, with a huge sigh. He stretched the word 'very' is if to illustrate how long.

We settled on pakoras.

And for supper? 'I hear the fish curries are good here?'

'There may be no fish in the market, madam.'

I soon learned my place in this food-dance. I suggested he find what was good in the market, and I would eat it. The result - the best food of my trip. He was truly talented. And - just once - he allowed me into his kitchen. Not to touch anything, but to smell it. So I stood by the stove and inhaled - ginger, and cinnamon, and coconut milk. Curry will never be the same again.

Who surprised you with wonderful food, at that moment when you needed it most?