Trekking in the tea plantations of Munnar, we met two easygoing German cousins. One taught us the art of eating in the South Indian way, scooping up rice loaded with sauce, hot vegetable sambhar and coconut chutney from the banana leaf, only using the fingers of one hand. It’s not surprising that she was so adept at…
Tag: India
Never tease a monkey with a peanut
Unlike the playful Disney animation, in Rudyard Kipling’s novel The Jungle Book, Baloo the bear gravely warns the young Mowgli about monkeys and their status in the jungle: “Listen, man-cub,” said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. “I have taught thee all the Law of the Jungle for all…
An Unexpected Indian Massage
After hauling a rucksack that weighed three quarters of me, a massage seemed just the ticket. A group of us had just rattled off a small minibus that had shaken us all the way from Delhi to the northern mountains of Old Manali. We’d travelled for a full day past miles of slums with flapping…
Deal with the Devil
There’s something almost Faustian about signing a disclaimer for an extreme sport, especially in India where ‘health and safety’ has hardly been adopted into the local psyche. Nevertheless, I scribbled my signature without hesitation, imagining myself soaring on the thermals over the Himalayas for just 5200 Rupees (roughly 60 GBP). Paragliding in the Solang Nallah…
Ferns and forest 