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Showing posts from June, 2013

Jam Session

Two days of stormy weather and now there are pre-Raphaelite mornings when any number of blessed damozels must be leaning out from the golden bars of heaven thinking Ranikhet's the place to be.  Photograph by Anuradha Roy  I've been sorting my stack of hill books -- many of which I've written about here . Browsing -- an unavoidable aspect of sorting -- through those old favourites, The Snow Leopard and The Valley of Flowers , I found all kinds of things I had missed before. And I noticed that both Peter Matthiessen and Frank Smythe, during their walks in Nepal, came upon bushes of Kilmora , a wild berry that is all over Ranikhet right now. They call it by its Latin name, Berberis . For some reason this is the first summer I've noticed these bunches of purple berries in bushes. No idea why I was blind to them before, they are so pretty. Ripening berries of the Berberis aristata/ Kilmora/ Daru Haldi/ Tree Turmeric, growing in Ranikhet. Photo by Anuradha Ro