Visit to Reading Temple (and some delicious food)

Since I don’t have any photos I have experimented and added a Google streetview image. This may take some time to load, but you can click, zoom and look around when it does.

Last week I had to stay in Reading for work for a few days. They had sent two of us down for a workshop, but the other guy had lived in Reading previously and had friends in the are who he visited in the evenings, which left me free to do what I wanted in the evenings. I was staying in a city-centre hotel, and was pleased to find that there is a Hindu Mandir about fifteen minutes walk away. I visited this a couple of times, and it was well attended, friendly and had some beautiful murtis of Shiva, Parvati, Murugan, and Ganesha. This added a nice spiritual element to my visit. It also gave me time to contemplate what to do having finished the second year of the Himalayan Academy Master Course, I will post about that later.

One evening I thought I would try a restaurant opposite the Mandir, the “Cafe Madras”. I later found that this is part of a chain called “Chennai Dosa”. It had an excellent South Indian style vegetarian menu. I had chilli fried idli followed by mysore masala dosa, with a mango lassi to drink. It really was excellent, really tasty and cooked just right. I had not realised how good the value was until I got the bill, the whole lot came to just over £7. When I put my expenses in to my manager he joked that I should spend more or the company might think we could all manage on that amount and reduce our claim limits! It was certainly the best meal of that trip, and by far the cheapest.