Train food

There are trains going from almost everywhere to almost everywhere in India. It's one of the most extensive rail networks on the planet, with some mind-boggling stats: around 20 million people travel by train every day, and Indian Railways is the world's largest utility employer with 1.5 million staff. Alongside cricket, the rail network is rightfully one of the proudest legacies of the British Raj. Everyone uses the trains and rail travel transcends class borders. As a traveller in India, I simply can't imagine how the country would function without the railways.

Keeping long rail journeys entertaining is the endless variety of food and drink which is peddled up and down carriages and on platforms. Unlike the limited offering of crisps, chocolate and bland, day-old sandwiches on British cross-country trains, on an Indian rail journey you'll be presented with a riot of different snacks - something new at every stop. Roving vendors jump aboard at every station, calling out their tasty offerings as they hurry up and down the carriages.

An early-morning journey we took from Bangalore to Mysore started with a chai wallah doing the rounds with a big flask of sweet, milky tea. Hot on his heels came vendors offering breakfast treats. We tried battered, deep-fried bananas and savoury biscuits made from subtly-spiced potato, onion and cauliflower - everything always freshly-cooked and still warm.

The return trip in the evening brought fresh peanuts in their shells, packed into slim newspaper cones, passed through the bars on the train windows. We also had savoury, spiced doughnuts, crunchy on the outside and soft inside, served on a cardboard plate with cooling coconut chutney.

On another journey, a rural stop somewhere between Goa and Mumbai featured tasty vada pao: golf-ball-sized, deep-fried spicy potato patties, served in a square of the Mumbai Mirror with little soft white bread rolls, green chillies and chutney; all the ingredients you need to make a delicious vege burger.

As we approached Mumbai on that same train, we tasted bhelpuri as good as you get anywhere in the city.

Indian wine

India's fledgling wine industry is turning out some surprisingly drinkable drops. A clutch of wineries (commendable names include Chateau Indage, Sula Vineyards and Grover Wines) have established positive reputations and are easily found on restaurant menus and in wine shops all over the country.

There is no reason why India should not be able to produce good wine. Several parts of the country have suitable climate and soil conditions. One of the most promising so far is Nasik in Maharashtra, north of Mumbai. The area benefits from a cool, maritime-influenced climate, a hilly landscape and well-drained soils. Over the past decade, these factors have allowed producers to turn out respectable wine from international varietals including chardonnay, chenin blanc, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz and zinfandel.

What's more, with wine drinking quickly gaining popularity among India's burgeoning middle class, there is a huge opportunity for ambitious local producers to focus on quality and grab market share from importers.

Tasting note: Sula Chenin Blanc 2008

Pale lemon in colour with a crisp citrus aroma. Light-bodied and off-dry with good acid balance. More zingy citrus on the palate - lemons and grapefruit - rounded out by ripe tropical pineapple and melon notes. Medium to long length. More than quaffable.

Industry pioneer Sula Vineyards is located 15km west of Nasik and offers winery tours and tasting. www.sulawines.com.

Mumbai

Mumbai is a city of jarring contrasts. Grand British-built edifices - monuments to the glory days of a vanished empire - loom over streets teeming with ordinary Indian daily life: vendors, beggars, sweepers and shoppers. Oxen pull cartloads of goods as smartly-dressed middle class Mumbaikers whiz past in their BMWs. Rickshaws, bicycles, scooters and 1950s Ambassador taxis honk and fight for space on the clogged streets.

Underneath a billboard advertising luxury bathroom fit-outs, a family crouches on the dusty footpath, their belongings tied in bundles beside them. The mother is cutting up vegetables to cook for dinner, right there on the pavement. They make the residents of nearby Dharavi slum, one of Asia's largest, look wealthy. Meanwhile, Bollywood stars sip cocktails at swanky bars in the city's upmarket suburbs.

There are places to escape to if it all gets too much. The green, palm-fringed Oval Maidan, where so many social cricket matches are underway on any given afternoon that their outfields overlap, is one of them. And the vast Taj Palace Hotel, in pride of place on the waterfront next to the massive stone Gateway of India arch, offers ridiculously-priced cups of tea and cucumber sandwiches to weary sightseers.

We found refuge in the tiny Kotachiwadi neighbourhood, near Chowpatty Beach. One of the several wadis, or hamlets, in Mumbai that somehow escaped the bulldozers as high-rise office blocks grew around them, Kotachiwadi is a Christian enclave of quaint wooden houses and winding lanes - a village within a city. Its streets are too narrow for taxis, cars and rickshaws, so the area is blissfully free of honking horns. Wandering the lanes reveals a quiet life, with many residents operating small businesses such as tailor shops out of their homes.

Every evening, people swarm on to Mumbai's beaches to see the sun dip below the Arabian Sea horizon. Dozens of food stalls offer up street food snacks to the crowds. Competition is fierce - the stall holders will do anything to get you to eat at their stall, from shoving their menu in your face as you walk past, to offering free samples. Whichever one you choose, you'll be able to taste Mumbai favourites such as bhelpuri, a tasty and crunchy mix of puffed rice, chopped onions and tomatoes, thin spicy besan sticks, coriander leaves, lemon zest and chutney. We also got stuck in to pav bhaji, a spicy vegetable curry served with little bread rolls fried in ghee; and pani puri, small hollow balls of crisp fried pastry filled with spicy tamarind water and potato.