My World of Food and Travel

The world is changing. It is changing at such a breakneck pace that sometimes it is difficult to stop a while and ponder over where we are headed towards. Apparently, we are progressing. Progress, they say, is required in life – for a better life. I wonder, though, if it should be at the cost of trampling over others’ lives.  A few days back I had stumbled across a horrible sight on Facebook. No, it was not the picture of an ultra-fanatic beheading a hapless hostage. It was something even more appalling and heart-rending. The picture was that of the world – a map depicting  countries with the most number of threatened animals, using different colours to illustrate the findings.  India was splattered with red.  So, ladies and gentlemen, our country holds infamy for having over 90 species of mammals that are threatened – one of the highest in the world. Should we let the curtains drop then, over these wretched creatures who cannot speak for themselves?  ...

I shall never forget the way sis and I had screamed when the lights dimmed in the theatre and the movie ‘Rhino ’came on screen. Screams of unrestrained delight. Of surprise. Today, there is no way I can convey my feelings of that day – the thrill that travelled down our spines on seeing our own bungalow on the big screen, our lives in Manas being played out in the movie… Rhino was the second film after Manas Kanya to have been filmed in Manas Wildlife Sanctuary during the years that I spent there. Unlike Manas Kanya, I have much sharper memories of Rhino although I was not present in Manas during its shooting. It was shot in Manas in 1987 and released in 1989. The story of three kids foiling rhino poaching attempts was based on Arup Kumar Dutta’s The Kaziranga Trail and went on to win the National Award for the best children’s movie (I think). The movie was produced by Children's Film Society, India. A still from the movie (Image credit: cfsi.org) The movie’s story w...

Part 1 here We had decided against going for the elephant safari the next morning. One had to traverse around 40 kms from Agoratoli to Baguri range to embark on the safari. It was too cold to wake up at 4.30 am to be able to take the elephant safari which started at 5.00 am, although there were subsequent trips at 6.00 am and 7.00 am. Mainly, we worried that the baby might throw tantrums atop an elephant. We were not sure how we could handle the situation then! So, the next morning we went on another Jeep safari at 8.00 am. Since the forest office was located just opposite the resort, not much time was wasted in completing the safari formalities. This time there were four more vehicles with us, comprising the other tourists. I wondered if that was a good idea, as not all of us may be equally enthusiastic about birds and animals.    Sohola Beel The Jeep took the same route as in the previous trip and our first stop was Sohola Beel. Here we caught si...

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD! I had first visited Kaziranga National Park as a child way back in the mid-80s. At that time, we used to live in Manas Wildlife Sanctuary. For us sisters, Kaziranga was a rival jungle. We were the Manas girls -nothing could beat Manas. Perhaps this attitude of ours prevented us from enjoying the beauty of Kaziranga and its memories remain vague and uneventful. With time and age, I have come to appreciate every single vista of greenery, our present selves being trapped in concrete jungles.  Hence, when the time came for the husband and me to visit our respective home towns in Assam, we decided to grab the opportunity and stay a night in Kaziranga, breaking the tedious 500 km journey from Guwahati to Tinsukia via NH-37. For the record, Kaziranga is a World Heritage Site and hosts two-thirds of the world's Great One-horned Rhinoceroses, attracting hordes of tourists every year. Still, we had not expected the scale of commercialism that to...