My trip to Ujjain was primarily based around the Mahakaleshwar temple, so I did not think about food at all beyond the vague assumption that I would find a place to eat in between the darshans. I had no idea that food was going to be just as important in structuring my day in Ujjain as were the temples! Ujjain has a very specific and satisfying culinary culture that far exceeded my expectations.

Day One: Arrival and an Accidental Poha Discovery

Once we arrived in Ujjain (late morning) and checked into our hotel, we went out looking for a quick snack to eat before our first temple visit. We found a small stall near our hotel selling poha (flattened rice dish with onion, sev, and lemon), and the line moving steadily told us that everyone else must be aware of something we had yet to discover, something that would soon tell us about the food culture of Ujjain.

After our evening visit to Mahakaleshwar, we came upon a small sweet shop near the temple selling malpua and their version was completely soaked through with syrup; it was not too sweet and ended up setting the standard for the other versions of this treat we would eat on this trip.

Day Two: Kachori in the Morning, a Proper Thali at Midday

The morning after our early Bhasma Aarti visit, we were cold, slightly disoriented from the 3:30 am start, and in need of something substantial. A kachori stall near the main market solved this completely. The kachoris here came stuffed with a spiced lentil filling, fried fresh and served with a tangy, slightly sweet chutney that cut through the richness well. Eating them standing at a small counter, still half asleep from the early start, felt like exactly the right way to recover.

By midday, we’d found our way to a proper Malwi thali at a restaurant near Ram Ghat, and this turned out to be one of the more memorable meals of the trip. The thali included dal bafla, a regional variation where wheat dumplings are baked, boiled, then dunked in ghee before being served alongside the dal, a preparation distinct enough from anything we’d eaten elsewhere that we asked the server to explain it twice before fully understanding what we were eating. Alongside it came a handful of vegetable preparations and a sweet, the kind of thali that’s clearly built for a substantial midday meal rather than anything light.

Day Three: Sweets Near the Ghats and a Final Round

The pattern of food that we ate on the last full day took on a totally different form from all the other meals we had eaten throughout the trip. Instead of having one structured meal per day, we ended up making many smaller, more frequent stops for foods. During a late morning walk by Ram Ghat, we purchased shikanji to enjoy because it was so hot, along with some jalebi fresh out of the oil from a stall nearby. They were so hot that we had to wait for a few minutes to eat them.

On the last night after we finished visiting Kal Bhairav Temple, we returned to the same poha stall where we ate our first day, both because we had a genuine want for it and also because it provided a fitting conclusion to our trip. The stall vendor recognised us, which indicated how much time we had spent walking the same few streets for a total of three days.

Why the Food and the Temples Tracked Together

As I look back, the rhythm and pattern of our food in Ujjain mirrored almost exactly the pattern and rhythm of our visits to the temples — with us hardly intentionally plotting it that way. Heavier meals were in the morning, lighter snacks were during the unstructured walks along the ghats, and desserts ended each day.

Staying close to the temple lanes made this kind of food wandering considerably easier to manage. Several hotels in Ujjain sit within a short walk of both Mahakaleshwar and the older market areas where most of these stalls and small restaurants operate. This meant we were never far from food even after the longer temple visits left us tired and not particularly inclined to travel far for a meal.