Eating "Papa Rice" in Nepal |

My Partner Accidentally Ordered "Mush Plus" and Traumatized Himself with Thakali 😂 Wandering the streets of Nepal at night, I couldn’t help humming my self-composed tune: “Thakali, Thakali, your favorite Thakali~” The melody was all over the place, and my partner next to me had a face as dark as curry, wanting to grab a rag from the roadside to my mouth. “Can you stop singing?” he ground his teeth, “I don’t want to see curry hand-held rice ever again in my life.” I laughed even harder—after all, it was his “courage” on the first day that turned him into a “hater” of Thakali sets. 🌿 Day 1: “I Want the Plus Version! The More Meat, the Better!” On our first day in Kathmandu, our local guide brother patted his chest and recommended: “You must try Thakali, our Nepal’s ‘national set meal’!” My partner’s eyes lit up, staring at “Thakali Set” on the menu and nodding vigorously: “I want that meat set, and the plus version!” He pointed at the word “Plus” on the menu, looking confident as if he knew, “The luxury version means more meat.” When the set arrived, both of us froze. There was indeed rice, curry beef, and pickles on the brass plate, but—right in the middle were two lumps of white, glutinous stuff, like unshaped rice cakes or dough soaked in water, quivering and shiny. The guide brother enthusiastically picked up a spoon: “Come, I’ll teach you to mix it!” He poured curry over the rice, then scooped a big spoonful of the “white lumps” into it. The yellow curry sauce (wrapped around) the glutinous mush, instantly turning into a “yellow-white mixture.” My partner frowned, took a bite out of “respect for local cuisine.” Three seconds into chewing, his expression froze: “This… it doesn’t taste like much? And it’s sticky.” Curious, I leaned over and scooped a bite—it did have a unique texture, like cornmeal mixed with buckwheat flour, thick enough to cling to the spoon, with no strong flavor, relying entirely on the spicy curry to enhance it. He didn’t like it, but I thought “it’s kind of interesting” and ate several mouthfuls without thinking. That night, he complained: “The so-called plus version is just two more lumps of tasteless mush? Where’s the luxury?” 🌲 Later: The “Curry Nightmare” in the Primitive Forest Who would have thought that was just the beginning? When we entered the primitive forest for trekking, the accommodation conditions dropped sharply, and every meal was “the familiar formula”: Thakali set. Rice, curry, pickles—sometimes it would be curry potatoes, sometimes curry chicken, but as soon as the bowl of rice was placed, my partner would frown reflexively. “Why is it this again?” he poked at the rice, “I get nervous when I see curry yellow now.” I laughed at him: “Who asked you to order the ‘plus version’ on the first day, using up all your quota.” He sighed and shoveled rice: “The key is those two lumps of mush—I never saw them again… Maybe I was lucky, and got the ‘hidden version’ on the first day?” 😂 The Truth: He Ordered “Papa Plus” Until tonight, when we saw a stall selling Dhido on the street—the vendor was stirring a pot of mush with a wooden spoon, white and thick, exactly like those two “white lumps” on the first day. “Hey, isn’t that what you ate on the first day?” I pointed at the stall and asked. My partner leaned over to look, then suddenly took out his phone: “Wait, I think I checked a word in the set that day…” He pulled up his history, and there it was: “Dhido.” I casually searched it on Baidu, and the screen popped up: Dhido, a traditional Nepali food, a mush made from corn, buckwheat, and millet flour, with a sticky texture, often eaten with curry. Looking again at the standard Thakali set: rice, curry, Dhido, pickles… The air suddenly went quiet. My partner froze for three seconds, then burst into laughter: “I knew those two lumps looked familiar! So the ‘plus version’ I ordered was Dhido plus! I paid extra for ‘papa’?!” He laughed so hard he couldn’t stand straight: “No wonder I never saw it again—who orders this every day! I thought it was a luxury meat set, but it’s a luxury mush set!” I laughed so hard I squatted on the ground: “So you weren’t traumatized by Thakali, but by the ‘paid extra papa’!” Now he finally understood why the guide’s eyes held a suppressed smile when he taught him to “mix and eat” that day. Indeed, the “social death” moments in travel are often hidden in the menus you didn’t check clearly. #food #curry #Nepal #FunnyGirl #TravelDiary