I have spent the past couple of weeks re-acquainting with the celebrated warmth, hospitality and bonhomie of village folk in Punjab. Expressed through a cup of (what they call) tea: half milk, half sugar, the tiniest possible pinch of tea leaves. Or a glass of milk with as generous a sugar helping. Desperate requests for un-sweetened tea were graciously met, but with only a slight reduction in the sugar content. Once, with the addition of salt, even.
The hot beverage was always accompanied by the freshest, most delicious home-made barfee; khoya (thickened milk), besan (gramflour) and alsi
(linseed) being the flavours of choice, generously speckled with dried fruits (or not, depending on the fiscal health of the host).While meals usually comprised salted rice with vegetables and curds or saag and makki di rotis hot off the chullah. Walking off some of my blatant displays of gluttony also provided me ample photo-ops, some of which I am sharing here. Hope you enjoy the walk, too.
Puneetinder Kaur Sidhu, travel enthusiast and the author of Adrift: A junket junkie in Europe is the youngest of four siblings born into an aristocratic family of Punjab. Dogged in her resistance to conform, and with parental pressure easing sufficiently over the years, she had plenty of freedom of choice. And she chose travel.
She was born in Shimla, and spent her formative years at their home, Windsor Terrace, in Kasumpti while schooling at Convent of Jesus & Mary, Chelsea. The irrepressible wanderlust in her found her changing vocations midstream and she joined Singapore International Airlines to give wing to her passion. She has travelled extensively in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, South Africa and SE Asia; simultaneously exploring the charms within India.
When she is not travelling, she is writing about it. Over the past decade or so, she has created an impressive writing repertoire for herself: as a columnist with Hindustan Times, as a book reviewer for The Tribune and as a contributor to travel magazines in India and overseas. Her work-in-progress, the documenting of colonial heritage along the Old Hindustan-Tibet Road, is an outcome of her long-standing romance with the Himalayas.
