Sugandha Garg

This is one action that Raghu Ram’s intrepid Roadies have not performed while his ebullient wife has — hunting rats for lunch. Sugandha Garg, now hosting Fox Traveller’s off-the-beaten-track travel show It Happens Only in India, has survived the meal to tell the tale.

“In Baster, Chhattisgarh, giant rats rule the fields. They feed on fresh crop and so are super high protein diet for the tribals. Joining them on the hunt was silent comedy with the rats dodging and the tails slipping out of our fingers.” The catch completed, the process is to roast the rat, then take out the hair and serve. “It tasted like, er, meat.”

Sugandha shows more enthusiasm about the dessert she was served — red ant chutney. A giant nest with millions of ants was dismantled from its perch. “It fell at my feet and within seconds, hum kat kat ke mar gaye. But I bore it, thinking ‘You bite me now, I eat you later.’” The chutney, she says, was “yummy”. “The ant was khatta (sour), the larvae meetha (sweet).”

Her extreme palate has also experienced fried silkworm in Majuli in Assam, the world’s largest river island. “That was like chocolate egg — gooey inside, crunchy outside.”

But nothing could persuade her to emulate the star of the Assam episode who accompanied her to Calcutta. Anandita Dutta Tamuli has chomped her way into the Limca Book of Records in 2006 by finishing 60 chillies in two minutes and smearing 12 in her eyes in one minute.

The show, currently airing on Fox Traveller on Sundays at 8pm, has taken her to unsung champions like Anandita and to nooks like Bundi in Rajasthan, Sindhudurg in Maharashtra, Jamnagar in Gujarat and Bidar in Karnataka. “The canvas in India is insane. In pockets, they live just the way their forefathers did,” she muses.

Sugandha goes on to talk about much more — coffee processed from the droppings of a civet, Ulta Ramayana and Bhagvad Gita which can be read only with a mirror, street dentists who practice on the footpath, emu egg omlettes, moustache artists. “I have lived life a bit too much in these four months,” she laughs.

After the success of Tere Bin Laden, Sugandha is looking forward to its sequel. Her film Patang, which also stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui (Khan in Kahaani) and Seema Biswas, is releasing in the US. While on the small screen her path may not cross with her husband Raghu’s, she nurtures a secret hope: “Wish someone casts us together in a film. Won’t we look cute?” asks the diminutive and delightfully lively wife of the small-screen disciplinarian.