No Weekends In Haridwar

Aarushi’s Blog

Welcome to our second last blog of this trip, this time by Aarushi.

Diwali celebrations in Noida

Yet again, we have done many things after Mum wrote her blog last month. We went to Delhi for the week-long Divali holiday in the last week of October. On the day of Divali itself we went to to celebrate at Anita Dadi's NOIDA home along with Nana, Nani, Baba and Dadi. We first did a Pooja and then set off fire crackers for over an hour on their terrace. It was all so amazing! Anni bua and I both loved the “Hakki Mukki” bombs. Bhai figured out a neat way to set off a lot of crackers one after another, which was very clever and worked.

While in Delhi, Dad made us watch a newly released Shah Rukh Khan movie at the Saket mall called "Happy New year". It was 3 and half hours long and even Dad admitted it was one of the worst movies he had seen. Far better was the Sound and Light show at Delhi’s Purana Quila (Old fort).

The following week Mum’s Manoj Mama and Susan Mami from London came to visit us in Haridwar. On the first day we took them to the Sureshwari Devi and Mansa Devi temples (which was a lot of climbing!), and the famous Ganga aarti. The next day, Dad and Mum took them to Rishikesh. We enjoyed having them over, and I think they did too!!!

The breathtaking view from our hotel balcony

The next weekend we drove to the pretty Himalayan hill station of Lansdowne. Unfortunately, we chose a bad time to leave Haridwar as this was the day of Guru Purnima, and also a public holiday because it was also Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary. Haridwar was filled with pilgrims from Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab, and they caused a MASSIVE traffic jam on the highway. We were stuck in this traffic jam for over an hour, just trying to leave Haridwar. But once we got out, it was a great drive. We met up with Nana and Nani in nearby Najibabad. They had driven up from Delhi and also encountered the same traffic trying to get to Haridwar. But after a refreshing lunch together, we finally reached Lansdowne late in the afternoon. We stayed in a hotel called Kasang regency, which was 6kms away from the town of Lansdowne. It was an awesome place with sweeping views from our room balcony of the Himalayan mountains, valleys and rivers cascading into the horizon. We took long walks each day in warm sunshine, and got to see some majestic snow-peaks up along the road. Dad reckoned it was the Kedarnath peak. Every night the hotel staff lit a bonfire outside, and all the guests joined with singing. One day we went into Lansdowne proper where we went boating on the Bhootal – a man made lake. We also bumped into Sharad mama (Mum’s first cousin from Faridabad) as we were walking on the road as he had driven up for some work there! Imagine – bumping into your first cousin in a big country like India while walking a lonely mountain road! We had great fun in Lansdowne!!    

Just when we got back to Haridwar and unpacked, it was time to pack our bags again and head out to Ludhiana and Amritsar over the next weekend. In Ludhiana we met Dad’s friend, Aman uncle and his family – Rachna aunty, her mum, Ameera and little Khushali. We had so much fun with them! We all stayed up late into the night talking, singing and dancing. And Rachna aunty’s mum cooked up the most delicious feast for us.

The Golden Temple in all it's beauty

In Amritsar we stayed in the Holiday Inn, which had a swimming pool with the coldest water I have ever been in. Didi and I went in and couldn’t feel our feet after a while! One night we went to the Golden Temple, which was an amazing experience. I have never seen something so shiny! There were lots of people there but still it was so peaceful. We walked into the main shrine and saw the people singing the Shabad. Everything was golden inside including even the harmoniums that they were playing! The “Langar” was also wonderful. The food was so tasty! While in Amritsar, we also had the famous Amritsari Fish. 

Last weekend we were back in Delhi for Nana’s 70^th birthday party on Saturday evening!! We gave him a few surprises – we had organised a “Kaun Banega Ashvani Mehta” quiz (similar to “Who wants to be a millionaire”, only that contestants were each of the 6 tables). I went around asking all the guests to take out a folded paper chit out of a hat that had a table number. This way the guests got to meet the other guests and not just people they knew.  Dad had mainly come up with the questions and multiple-choice answers with help from all of us including Billu nana, and they were really funny. Everyone laughed a lot. For some of the questions, we had filmed the answer with different members of Nana’s family. Bhai made a mask of Nana’s face and acted as Nana in all these film clips which were very funny. Didi, Aanvi and I were the scorekeepers. Out of the 19 questions, the winning team from Table 6 got 17 right! Our cousin Anya and Jyoti Nani (who is the wife of Nani’s cousin, and also granddaughter of the last King of Kashmir!) laughed hardest at the jokes. It was all great fun! We ended the night with a lot of singing. Everyone joined in for the last song, which was Nana’s favourite  - “Ramaiya vasta vaiya”. It was also fun to see Sushim mama and Aanvi again after so many months. Shveta mami and Adrita couldn't come but we had a great day with Aanvi. 

Meanwhile winter has slowly set in. Apart from the chilly foggy mornings, the most visible change for us was the switch to our winter school uniforms earlier this month. 

Oh and before I forget, the last weekend that we did spend in Haridwar, Rakesh chacha and Cheeni bhaiya made "Litti-chokha", a traditional dish from Bihar and Eastern UP. It was one of the most delicious things I have eaten. I had 5 Littis and Didi had many more than that! They cooked the Littis on a stack of dried cow-dung patties (yuck!) but the Littis were so tasty. That night Abhiram chacha and his family as well as Madhavi aunty and her sons Kunal and Orin had also come over so it was yet another unexpected party!

Thank you for reading this blog and please read the next and final blog by Baba and Dadi!

A Thrill A Day

It’s time for me, Shibani to put my creative hat on and write about the events of the last month.

This edition starts off with a BANG! In the blog before mine, Aadya left off in Haridwar where we had spent 5 days after my trip to Delhi & Agra with our friends Rod, Anne, Amy & Gab (visiting us from Australia). And so on the morning of the 1^st of October we piled into the ‘tempo traveller’ (a mini bus) for our eventful road trip of 210 km to Delhi from where we were to take an overnight train to Varanasi (one of the oldest cities in the world!).

Saurabh got Gab onto a shared auto rickshaw and instructed the driver to drop her off at the train station where his cousin Rakesh was meant to have received her and got her boarded into a bus to Rishikesh. Gab was headed to Rishikesh for a month-long Yoga teacher’s training course. About an hour later Saurabh got a frantic phone call from Rakesh asking where Gab was! She hadn’t yet made it to the railway station, a distance of 7 kms, which normally would take no more than 20 minutes (and of course she wasn’t carrying a working mobile phone!). We had an emergency meeting in the min-van and decided that most probably she had somehow missed Rakesh at the train station and got on to a bus to Rishikesh herself. And so Saurabh left her a message on her e-mail, Facebook, and at the Ashram in Rishikesh, asking her to call him back. Saurabh also called our friend Captain Alok Gupta, a prominent Haridwar businessman who is also on close terms with the chief minister of the state. Alok reassured us that Haridwar was a safe town and that people didn’t generally just go missing. They decided that if we hadn’t heard from Gab by 1.30pm, we were to call him back and he would ensure a massive ‘man (rather woman) hunt’ through the state’s police! Fortunately, Gab responded to our e-mail in the nick of time. The auto rickshaw had dropped her off somewhere else, so she had simply taken another one to the bus stop and had made it safely to Rishikesh. Alok later told Saurabh that he had already worded up the Police hierarchy as a young foreign woman gone missing was not something that this state with its large tourist industry could afford! I can only imagine what Gab’s reaction might have been if she hadn’t got back in touch with us and had the Police ramming down the door of the Ashram in which she was staying in the middle of the night in their bid to “rescue” her!

However, little did we realize that the excitement for our day was not yet over! The next heart racing moments came as we sat in unusual-even-for Delhi stand-still traffic, with our group divided between 2 cabs EVEN though we had given them strict instructions to stay together, the cabbies in their own wisdom had each chosen different routes to get us to the train station!. The distance of 12 kms took us 1.5 hours!!! In retrospect given that school holidays were to start the next day, it was probably similar to the traffic jam around Melbourne airport on the evening before start of school holidays….only that this was Delhi, and so it was akin to the entire population of Melbourne trying to get to Tullamarine! We got to the train station minutes before our overnight train to Varanasi was due to depart. 8 people, 7 big pieces of luggage, 4 porters, all running helter-skelter along the stairs, foot bridge, platform, and tossing themselves into the train with just enough time to catch our breaths before the train glided off the platform!

Now ensconsed in the plush first class compartment and able to laugh about our day, Rod promised us a round of drinks to celebrate when we got to the Raddison in Varanasi. But that wasn’t to be, as it was 2^nd October (Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary), and so a nation-wide “dry day”! Poor Rod mustered the courage to again ask for a drink later that week when we were in Kalimpong (West Bengal), to be told he couldn’t have one because it was a Thursday, a state wide dry day (!). Add to that his unending quest for a “good cup of coffee” (Rod: “What types of Coffee do you have here?” Beaming Waiter: “Sir, hot or cold”), and I am sure our friends will long-remember their maiden travels through India!

Waking up the next morning to a rolling scenery of green fields and the mighty Yamuna was a treat! Travelling through the poorest state in India, I was reminded of the India I left behind 16 years ago...in the last few years though we have travelled though villages in India, I have been amazed by the progress….the earthen huts with thatched roofs have largely been replaced by brick huts with terracotta roof tiles and mobile phone dishes….however these villages that our train zoomed past on the 2^nd of October was just how I remembered them.

The aarti from our boat

At Varanasi station we were warmly greeted by Anamika (Saurabh’s third cousin who has been our travel agent extraordinaire this year!) & her business partner Sarika. After a short rest at the hotel (and club sandwiches for lunch thanks to Aadya’s ongoing obsession with them), we went to high tea with Anamika’s family. Greeted by marigold garlands and a teeka made it all the more special! We followed with a boat ride on the mighty Ganga. By the time the Ganga gets to Varanasi it is already very visibly polluted with God only knows which poisonous chemicals and bacteria. And so all of us were petrified of even touching the water in case our flesh got fried off or something. It was difficult to imagine that this was the same Ganga that we had fearlessly jumped into at Rishikesh while white water rafting! We then saw the famous ‘Aarti’ It indeed was a very different perspective to the Haridwar aarti as here the Ganga is fast flowing, and so the only viewing spots are on the river banks whereas in Varanasi we saw it from the boat on the river. I was amazed to see that the aarti was being performed by two sets of priests. We later found out that there had been some disagreement amongst the priests and so they had split into the two factions, with both performing the evening prayers within metres of each other with about a 5-minute time lag…ONLY in India.

For me the next day was the highlight of our stay in Varanasi. In the morning Saurabh, Anne, Rod and I went in search of the house in which Lahiri Mahasaya had lived 150-years ago (he was a Guru in Saurabh’s Kriya Yoga tradition). This was on Saurabh’s otherwise short “Must-See” list during this year of travels.

I must say that walking along the tiny cobble-stoned alleyways of Bengali Tola was mystical (though they were a bit dirty). I enjoyed visualizing how they might be when clean, and imagining the lives of the people who lived there. We found the house, and after a short but deep meditation session sitting on the ledge in front of the house, we walked along the ghats to see them in the morning light.

The kids trying to to gnaw their way through raw sugarcane

Sitting on the banks of the Gomati river

Then came the trip with Anamika’s family to their village (Niyar), which was an hour’s drive from Varanasi. Now, Saurabh had worded us up that we were going to the banks of the Gomati river and that we would experience the complete quiet (something that he had experienced along the Ganga in his ancestral village). Imagine our horror when we got off the car close to one of the oldest temples in India along the banks of the river, only to be greeted by VERY loud, crass, auto-tuned Bhojpuri songs being bleated out of 8 massive speakers stacked at the back of a mini van! The entire village had seemingly gathered in the temple to celebrate the Dussera festival, and they were having a lot of fun with it. Fortunately Anamika’s Dad had some influence and so upon his request, they turned off the music for about 20 minutes that allowed us to soak up the absolute quiet & serenity. We then continued on to Anamika’s ancestral property, which was amongst miles of rice & sugarcane  fields. It was very kind of the family to invite us to walk through their house and fields, and pluck a fresh sugar cane out of the field! The kids got a small taste of how the masses of rural India live.

Rod with Anamika and Sarika

We enjoyed meeting Saurabh’s school friend Shefali, her husband Alok, and their daughter Aastha. We managed to squeeze in a short trip to the nearby majestic Sarnath (from where Buddha started spreading his teachings after he attained enlightenment) the next morning before flying out to Kolkata.

This was my first trip to Varanasi (also referred to by many as the city of thugs), and I was skeptical about going there, but I left with a thought in my heart to some day return and explore it in more detail. Saurabh did say that seeing Varanasi on the day of the launch of the “Clean India” campaign (2^nd October) did probably help create this impression of Varanasi in my mind. I am intrigued by Prime minister Narendra Modi ji’s vision to develop Varanasi along the lines of Kyoto – a tasteful combination of the ancient and modern. If they manage to achieve half that, then Varanasi will indeed be a place worth re-visiting.

All of us at a hilltop monastery in Sikkim

An overnight stay in Kolkata made memorable by a visit from Vijay chacha and Aditi chachi (my Dad’s youngest brother & his wife), then breakfast with our Melbourne friends Sumona Bhattacharya and her kids Rohan and Ramona (infact they were to fly back home a few hours after our meeting!), and seeing the city bathed in the lights of the festive season of Durga puja brought memories from my childhood flooding back!

The Gomtee Tea Estate 

Tea plantations

One of the mentioned scrabble games

Staying at the Gomtee tea estate enroute to Sikkim, sipping on the very fragrant Darjeeling tea, playing several (intense) games of scrabble, chess and then a wander through the tea gardens in the morning started off our trip in Eastern India on a high - a high that continued for the next 4 days despite being tossed around in all axes on the “organic roads” of Sikkim. Sikkim is the last of the states to be added to India in 1976, but has by far some of the worst roads that we have EVER travelled on!

Kanchenjunga at sunset from our hotel lawn

But one look at Kanchenjunga (the third highest peak in the world, the highest in India) and all the fatigue from the 8-hour car ride covering a distance of mere 90 km vanished! Then the walks through the small roads around Pelling, stumbling upon a bakery which served the best apple strudels I have tasted in India, and gazing at the mighty mountain from our bedroom windows was all that we did for the 2 days that we spent in Pelling.

Kanchenjunga on a cloudless afternoon

Kanchenjunga looking majestic at 5am

On our overnight stay at the Orchid resort outside Kalimpong, Saurabh and I stayed up late watching the twinkling night lights of Kalimpong from our balcony, chatting, and listening to “Dil dhoondhta hai, phir vohi fursat ke raat din” (“the heart yearns for those carefree times”). This was a poetic “icing on the cake” to a most amazing holiday. Thank you Saurabh, kids, Rod, Anne & Amy!

I had asked Rod to also share his impressions of the trip with us as well as his solo adventures down-south:

What an amazing trip. So much to see, hear, feel and taste! My great friends and incomparable hosts, the Mishras have made such a difference in giving me amazing insights into this intriguing continent. From the mass of humanity in Delhi to the peace and tranquillity of Sikkim and everything in between this trip was something very special.

The highlights are almost too many to cover in two paragraphs but here goes. The Taj Mahal has to be the most amazing structure I've ever seen. It truly is one wonder that exceeds all expectations. Secondly the early morning sight of the 3rd highest mountain in the world in a cloudless sky truly took my breath away. Thirdly I can't write this without mentioning food. At one point I remarked to Shibani that when we aren't eating we seem to be talking about food! Being a big spicy food person the tastes of India have truly delighted me.

After leaving the Mishras in Kolkata I headed south to Kerala. A very tiring 12.5 hour day took me from Kolkata to Munar and I was very unhappy about this amount of travel all in the one day. However after a good night’s rest I got rid of my grumpiness. Kerala is such a different place to the places I’d visited in the north. It was so green and lush, perhaps as a result of its having about 100 days of rain each year. One interesting thing was that Kerala has so many catholic churches (they outnumbered the temples). At the Lake Periya reserve I did a trek with the hope of seeing some local wildlife. We saw some buffalo and deer and lots of monkeys. The closest we got to a tiger was a paw print and some freshly laid tiger droppings. The droppings we were assured by our guide were from earlier in the morning (about 2-3 hours before). The next highlight in Kerala was the backwater houseboat near Kochi. I had a crew of 3 to myself and we cruised through the backwaters seeing the local fishing villages and rice fields, before sleeping on the boat. It was a truly magical experience.

My perceptions of India are that it is so full of contrasts. A large percentage of the population is incredibly poor but somehow they mostly seem happy. The new Prime Minister Modi seems to have galvanized the people behind him. One of his first tasks was to initiate a national clean-up day. I hope it is more than just symbolic because there is a real need to clean up this country. One of the more amusing news articles of the clean-up day included a photo of PM Modi cleaning up rubbish beside a photo of the aftermath of the clean-up where his entourage had left a huge pile of plastic water bottles. Not a good look! Of significance he has also launched "Make it in India". Economically this would seem to make perfect sense - generating jobs and building wealth for India’s huge population.

Overall it has been great - my first visit to somewhere I've always dreamed about visiting and a place that's always held a fascination for me. My travel companions were a joy. Thanks to Anne, Amy, Gab, Rishabh, Aadya, and Aarushi. Very special thanks to Saurabh and Shibani - I've learnt so much about the country from you both. Also a huge thank you to Shibani’s parents Ashvani and Deepa – delightful hosts for our Delhi stay, and to Saurabh’s parents Satyen and Manju, - the wonderful co-hosts in Haridwar.

And you are back with me. So I returned to Haridwar with the kids for a week before we all made it back out to Delhi for the Diwali holidays (another terrific decision!). Saurabh and the others headed down to Kolkata from where they each went in different directions – Saurabh to Mumbai, Pune and Delhi; Rod on to Kerala, and Anne & Amy back home to Melbourne. Meanwhile Saurabh’s parents had gone off to Jabalpur to stay with Kuljeet uncle (Papa’s old friend and Saurabh’s music teacher), and Raj aunty. So everyone was everywhere! My parents had travelled to Pune to help my brother Sushim and his wife Shveta with their newborn (welcome to the family kiddo!). Even the redoubtable Mr. Chini had gone home to Ballia.

Our short week in Haridwar was packed with activities - Aadya’s inter-school basketball games, a classical vocal concert by the Gundecha brothers, and a Kathak performance by Ms Shovana Narayan at the beautiful IIT Rorkee campus.

I then joined Saurabh in Delhi to attend a brain-stimulating conference for entrepreneurs (TieCon Delhi). I was amazed and inspired by the inspirational stories of these entrepreneurs, and by the energy and verve of the upcoming young entrepreneurs.

This was followed by an amazing 2 days of what I can best describe as ‘concert hopping’ in Delhi! Listening to a sitar recital by Adnan Khan followed by a vocal recital by 86 year old (rather young!) Girija Devi in the outdoor amphitheatre of the habitat centre, Pandit Rajan & Sanjan Mishra (the brother duo, two stalwarts of Indian Classical music), Pandit Vishvamohan Bhatt (the grammy award winner), and then Pandit Birju Maharaj ji (the ‘living legend’ of Kathak dance), all in the span of 36 hours was exhilarating.

My blog also ends with a BANG, this one from the fire-crackers that we lit to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights! Aarushi has requested to let her describe this festival, and so I duly hand over the chronicler role to her. In closing I have to also acknowledge with mixed emotions, that Aarushi's blog at the end of November will be the penultimate blog of this amazing one-year trip, to be followed by a final joint effort between Mum and Dad.

Eat badam, pass exam!

Hello, this is Aadya with the latest installment of our monthly blog.

This month has been filled with anxiety for children across India as it was the time of the ‘Half Yearly Examinations’ - a big deal for everyone except for us ofcourse (and that includes Aarushi as grade 4 pip squeaks were also exempted from said exams). The exams were for all of our subjects (including moral science) and the primary reason why we haven’t been able to get out of Haridwar much this month. But when one door closes another opens. So even though we couldn’t get out and about, our friends from Australia have come to Haridwar to visit us! These include dad’s friend Rod Smith, our family friend Kylie’s sister Gab, and our long-time family friends Anne and Amy Allen. They travelled through Delhi with mum and then joined us here in Haridwar.

Rod and Amy having fun

Here’s a short note written by Anne and Amy about Delhi and Agra.

Red Fort

Amy’s first impressions of Delhi were “very crowded, and definitely hot. The traffic was nothing like Melbourne traffic. In India vehicles do what they want, and cows are similar as well. There are cars driving on the wrong side of the road and speeding past the red traffic lights. My favourite Indian food is roti which is pretty much all I ate for the first couple of days."

A photo of Qutb Minar taken by Anne in Delhi

A 'natural shot' of Rod, Gab, Anne, Mum and Amy

We are very grateful to Shibani and her parents for taking such good care of us in Delhi and making our introduction to this amazing country so seamless. We had a great couple of days in Delhi visiting some of the sights and experiencing the various modes of transport. Our ride home from the market in the autorickshaw made me think that our driver was in training for the next F1 race the way he weaved in and out of the traffic and swerved around corners! However, I was very impressed with the Delhi subway/ train system, very efficient, clean and air-conditioned and most of all on time with a train every 2 minutes…. Melbourne should take a leaf out of this book.

The mentioned 'rooftop dinner'

The iconic Taj Mahal captured by Anne

Our trip to Agra to see the magnificent Taj Mahal has certainly been a highlight so far (apart from seeing all the Mishras again of course!) Our rooftop dinner watching the sunset was great and the sunrise over the Taj will be something that we’ll always remember.

Amy found the heat in Delhi and Agra quite draining but soon perked up when she saw Aadya waiting on the train platform for her when we arrived in Haridwar. We’ve taken lots of photos and noticed that the Indian people like to pose for their photos but not smile. We all had a laugh at how the Mishras have mastered the art of the “Indian Photo” 

Our 'Indian Photo' with us all dressed in 'ethnic wear'

And you’re back with me, Aadya. We have taken the 5 visitors to see all there is to see in Haridwar: the Ganga ‘aarti’ (sunset prayer session), the new Pentagon Mall in the upcoming industrial area of the holy city, and the close-by city of Rishikesh.

In the mall, we took them to ‘Café Coffee Day’ or as the super-cool teens of India call it ‘CCD’. Rod, Anne and Gab were all craving coffee as since they came to India, they’ve only had the horrible watered down, sugary syrup with some traces of coffee powder that is available. (At a restaurant one night, after dinner, Rod asked for a coffee, when the waiter was asked which types of coffees were available, the man replied, “sir, hot or cold.” Rod was horrified but hid it well and asked for the hot coffee. When it arrived, the waiter was extra-careful to point out that it was “hot coffee!”) After the coffee-fix, we took Amy, Gab and Rod to the ‘Horror House’ and then to a Hindi movie in the cinema hall (“Khoobsurat”). They seemed to enjoy the movie very much despite not being able to understand the dialogue.

Rafting on the Ganga in Rishikesh

In Rishikesh we went white water rafting on the Ganga (Ganges), which until we got on the raft, was looking really dodgy and unsafe. We arrived fashionably late (an hour later than we were supposed to) and then they delayed us further with disorganization. We finally got on the raft at about 4:50 for our 2:30 booking and we, after being told that it was a 2 hour session, were afraid that we would be rafting in the dark. As it happened, as soon as we got on the raft, after the worrying safety briefing and learning what to do when we fall out of the raft, we saw another rafter floating down the river in a life jacket and a raft of people, missing a member, coming closely behind. To my amazement, when he finally got rescued, he simply got back in his raft and finished the rest of the rafting trip! (After nearly floating into a group of treacherous rapids around the corner). That made me really respect him for if it were me I would be so petrified of water that I wouldn’t go near it ever again!

Surprisingly, when we got to the calmer, down-stream, rapid-free water, the guides said that we could jump in if we wanted to. I was skeptical at first but then I just thought ‘what the heck’ and jumped first. In the end, only Aarushi and Sudarshan Bhaiya (both of whom are not confident swimmers) were the only ones left in the rafts. Even mum mustered up the courage to jump into the ice-cold river when Rod shouted from the water ‘you can’t miss out on your dip in the holy Ganges.’ After which, mum was straight in.

Rish's 'inspirational shot' of the aarti

At the Ganga aarti we had a real red carpet sort of experience when we were seated 2 metres from the holy river about 5 metres away from the main pandit.

Rod trying to repeat what the pandit is saying to bless his family

Recently, Indian scientists have accomplished something great; the MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) has successfully reached the orbit of the red planet. India is the forth country to do so and the first country to do so on the first attempt! And in true desi style, this huge mission only took minimal cost; they spent less on sending the orbiter to mars than what was spent on the blockbuster movie ‘Gravity’. Quite a triumph if you ask me.

So you may be wondering about the title; eat badam, pass exam…

To explain, ‘badam’ is the Hindi word for almond and, as we know, almonds are very healthy and good ‘brain food’. So it makes complete sense- eat badam, and you’ll pass your exam! Mind you, badam and exam don’t rhyme unless read in an Indian accent. This saying was created by yours truly, taking inspiration from the ongoing exams and I just channeled what all other mothers are probably doing to make their children pass these ‘very important’ exams.

Soon we will be leaving to go to Sikkim, one of the north-eastern states of India. Supposedly very green, unpopulated and mountainous which sounds like a nice place if you ask me. On the way we will be passing through Delhi, Varanasi and Kolkatta.

To inform you on the travels though the listed places, and surely much more, mum will be writing next month.