An order typically involves a glass filled with simple syrup and freshly squeezed lime juice brought to the table with a bottle of soda water. Roasted cumin is sometimes added but more commonly served this way on the East coast. In the North, glasses often come filled only with the fresh lime juice, customers must add granulated sugar to taste. Add salt to taste (optional), pour soda water into glass and enjoy. Average cost runs Rs 20 but can be as high as Rs 40. Don’t accept the prepackaged beverage Limca. Although it has a similar taste, and it is the best alternative if fresh lime juice is not available, it will not provide the same experience.

Travelers of India may also see juice shops advertising mosambi juice. This is a similar drink using the same lime or mosambi for the core ingredient.

Mix the fragrant thirst quencher for those hot days at home. Below is a quick and easy recipe for how to make Lime Soda Sweet:

-Fill a tall glass with ice.

-Add 1 1/2 ounces of fresh-squeezed lime juice to the glass.

-Add 1 1/2 ounces of simple syrup

(To make simple syrup, just take a cup of sugar and add it to a cup or more of boiling water. Let it cool. Put it in a container and stick it in the fridge).

-Fill the glass with soda water

-Add salt to taste (the contrast of salt against the sugar is perfection and brings out the lime flavor)

-Garnish with a pinch of fresh-roasted cumin

(Put a teaspoon or more of cumin seeds in a small, hot pan. When they start smoking, in about 10 seconds, start shaking the pan. They will roast in less than a minute. Roasting the cumin seeds brings out the flavor of the seeds).

-Optionally garnish with fresh mint leaves, maraschino cherries, lime, lemon or orange slices.

Lassi is quick and easy to make at home with a few items ordinarily kept on hand. While most restaurants and tea stalls make their version in a blender, the video below shows an alternative way to make your new favorite drink. Restaurant lassi is typically too thin due to the high churn of a blender. Following the whisk approach in the video, you’ll have more control over the texture and consistency. A slightly thicker lassi slows drinking time while allowing the flavor and refreshment of the beverage to hit the palette. Too thin and it’s like drinking milk.

TIP: Water is an ingredient commonly used to make lassi. Tourists concerned about tap water should request the use of bottled water. Also, lassi is a excellent way to introduce bacteria into your body naturally. Make it one of your first eatable items upon arrival to India to get the stomach full of Indian goodness.

A local favorite drink for South Indians is fresh coconut water, sipped directly from the seed. Vendors line the streets of any town along the highways allowing thirsty customers easy access to their product. Ordering this treat is a quick process. Salesmen use a machete to whack off an end piece exposing the inner space filled with clear liquid. Drop a straw into the liquid and you’re ready to drink.

Don’t expect the same taste as the dried pieces so common in the US. Instead your taste buds will be met with a mild, very slight salt flavor lacking the overly sweet flavors we are accustomed to. Once the liquid is consumed many locals treat themselves to the fleshy lining. This flesh hardens as the coconut continues to age, even after it’s picked.

Exhausted coconuts are discarded right on the street. Over time they will be collected into a large heap, eventually loaded into large trucks that remove them and then sold for fuel and other uses. All this for Rs 10 (25¢).

One of the things I crave my first morning waking up back in India is a good, strong cup of chai tea. I haven’t been able to reproduce this Indian drink at home as I can find in India. Finding this hot drink, a holdover from the British era now steeped in the Indian culture, can sometimes be a cat and mouse game depending on my location.

Any hotel of India or guest house you stay at can provide the tea. If they don’t have a kitchen on site, the staff will run out into the market and bring what they found up to your guest room. Most mornings I wake up before the hotel staff so ordering and getting tea can prove futile. This past trip was especially difficult as the guest houses I found myself in were small, mom and pop type properties. The staff works late taking in guests and sleeps until 8 or 9 A.M. since most of the guests don’t stir before then. In this case I just run out into the market myself.

Chai stalls are a documentary to be made unto themselves. Each one is unique, the taste from each varies so widely but the interest for me is the owner and the location. You can always find the latest scoop for the area you’re traveling from the chai wallah. Stalls start opening by 6 A.M. The earliest I have seen, and heard opening, was a stall across from my room in Mandi at 4:30 A.M. He was serious about grabbing the early worm.

The stalls…well, you just have to look the other way sometimes. Few if any would pass US health codes so forget your perfectly sanitary idea of Starbucks. The milk is usually left sitting out all day in a metal pot, sometimes covered or else open with flies circling. Obviously the milk is boiled during the tea making process which is why it’s safe to stop at virtually any stall. There are times when I will move on after entering and looking around, maybe it’s exceptionally dirty or they use powered milk instead of buffalo milk.

Expect to pay anywhere from Rs 4 to Rs 8 for a single cup of chai (also referred to as masala tea) on the street. Hotels, restaurants and cafes will charge Rs 15 and up. Skip those places and get a better cup in the market or on the road.

Fortunately Rakesh shares my same addiction to chai and helps to scout out a tea stop at just the right time each day. When either of us is ready we just say T & P. Stop for tea and take a pee. The efficient way of travel in India.