India’s a country that’s had a huge influence on Once In A Blue Moon Cafe. It’s where our beautiful marquees come from, many of our recipes are inspired by Indian cuisine and two of our founding members started thinking about setting up a festival cafe during a long stint backpacking there way back in 2012/13. Summer 2023 saw the last outing for our trusty original canvas marquee, which has sadly now reached the end of its life. It’s housed our full cafe / venue every festival season since 2016 and has been set up over a hundred times!
Busy working in fields across the UK all summer, festival and event industry people such as ourselves often take their holidays during the quieter winter season to escape the UK’s cold, darker months – not necessarily something to complain about! So in January of 2024 we decided to combine organising a marquee upgrade and replacement with a little trip to explore some new parts of India.
Arriving on a hot, humid and sunny morning in Mumbai – it was great to be back! We were immediately greeted by that unmistakeable assault on the senses – colour, smells, sounds and people everywhere. We had a few days exploring this huge metropolis, dining in some amazing restaurants, hanging out with friends, frequenting a very swanky hipster coffee joint for our daily caffeine fix and even catching an Indian Classical outdoor flute concert! In a country so big and diverse, there’s always an incredible amount of stuff to do so it’s hard to fit everything in. We carved out a nice little itinerary though, which saw us also head to Nashik, Jodhpur, Pushkar and Delhi. The highlights? Well, first things first, India’s all about the food!
Pretty much every single place we stopped for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a street-food snack whilst on the move was absolutely delicious. As well as eating as much as we physically could, we stocked up on chai spices to bring back, picked up some new cooking equipment and crockery and did an Indian Cookery Class in Pushkar – all great fun! It was cool to discover some interesting new techniques and spice combinations, as well as learn how to make a couple of our favourite dishes from the trip: Paneer Butter Massala and Chole Bhatura. Massive shout out to chef Prem for his delicious cooking at one of the guesthouses we stayed in, and cookery class host Deepa for sharing her culinary skills.
As well as eating a lot of delicious food and sightseeing, we also found time for trekking and hiking, exploring temples, chilling in cosy cafes, scouring bazaars for decorative material & ornamental treasures and did a spot of camel-riding! We also stopped by say hello in person to the family business who manufacture our marquees for the first time. It was great to finally meet the team and get a little tour of their operation, including a demonstration of the techniques involved. On top of the replacement cafe marquee we already knew we needed, we also ordered a whole load of bespoke cushion covers AND a brand new, custom designed beautiful little gazebo to add to our repertoire…Watch this space, it’s be available for hire soon on the Marquee & Equipment Hire page on our website.
There were plenty of other memorable encounters and experiences during the trip. We met an awesome Indian Head Massage guy, found ourselves a PROPER Chai Walla dispensing urn in the chaotic streets of Old Delhi and befriended, shared stories and played games with two young Indian guys whilst on one of the many long cross-country train journeys. In fact we also found time during these journeys to smash out a couple of meetings and get some of the pre-festival preparation work out of the way! We’re looking forward to setting up our new structures and putting the decor bits we bought to good use in the coming months – and we’re looking forward to another trip out to explore more of India one day.
