The LO—previously, the ‘Little One’—is my now-nine-year-old daughter. I say ‘previously’ because the LO has now decided (and both her father and I agree) that she’s too old to be called ‘little’. “How about Loved One instead?” she said, and I agreed. The LO is now the Loved One. She always has been, actually.

For those who’ve read previous travelogues on this blog, you’d know that the LO is quite a one for travelling. Much like her parents, really: all three of us like nothing better than to go new places, explore new cultures, experiment with new foods.

This time, our summer vacation was not really a completely new experience. My husband and I have been to Shimla before, and the LO has been to Himachal too. But she hasn’t been to Shimla, and that, we figured, needed to be corrected. Also, it had been fifteen years since the two of us had been there last. High time for another trip.

From Noida, it’s an easy two-day journey up to Shimla. This travelogue is about our trip up to Shimla and back; Shimla itself will be covered in Part 2 of this travelogue.

On our first day, we drove from Noida to Chandigarh in easy stretches, arriving in Chandigarh sometime in the late afternoon. We stayed at the Novotel, and the LO was very excited to discover that the hotel lobby houses a Porsche showroom! She couldn’t stop ogling the cars.

To read the first part of this travelogue (Guwahati), click here.

Having spent the few hours we got in Guwahati sightseeing and eating out, we got up the next morning and set off for Kaziranga. Kaziranga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is about 195 km from Guwahati, a distance that can be accomplished in about 5 hours (or less). The road is pretty good, a well-tarred, well-maintained, broad highway that goes mostly through the plains. Getting out of Guwahati itself took us close to an hour, and the LO kept remarking throughout: “It looks just like Ring Road!” (Delhi’s Ring Road, or at least those stretches of it we traverse frequently, often has construction work going on: flyovers being made, half the road cordoned off, traffic jams aplenty and the roadside trees choked with dust).

Interestingly, the outskirts of Guwahati abut onto Meghalaya; for about 15 minutes or so, the Innova that had come to take us to Kaziranga travelled through Meghalaya before re-entering Assam.

We traversed other interesting, and often very scenic, stretches of road once we were past the urban sprawl of Guwahati. The Assam countryside is very pretty: the villages nestle among coconut and betel nut palms, banana plants, and fields of paddy, or—even more striking right now, when it bursts into sunny yellow bloom—mustard. We passed many village ponds covered with deep pink waterlilies, and there were fishing nets anchored here and there, waiting for the catch.

(For part I of this travelogue, click here).

The next morning, we’d planned to go as early as possible to the Taj. This, given that the LO eats in a very leisurely style, meant that we eventually ended up leaving the hotel by around 8.30. It was a little cloudy at the time, but nothing, we thought, that might be a problem.

You can use fossil fuel transport till only outside a kilometre of the Taj; so our Ola taxi dropped us off, and we set off on foot, pursued hotly all the way by guides offering their services. We managed to fob them all off (we’ve been here several times before, and given that I did a lot of research on the Taj and Agra in general for my book Engraved in Stone, I do know a fair bit), and bought our tickets (Rs 200 per adult Indian if you want to go inside the mausoleum; Rs 50 if you’re content to see everything else but not enter the mausoleum).

Security, of course, is quite stringent, and this was where we ran up against an obstacle.

For the Agra trip, the LO had brought along a prized possession, a plastic tiara. This she insisted on wearing, in the fond belief that Mumtaz Mahal deserved a visit from someone dolled up like a maharani (never mind that the tiara didn’t quite match with the jeans, T-shirt, and Crocs the LO was clad in).

Some of you who’ve been following this blog over the past few years might know about the LO. The ‘Little One’, my now-nearly-nine year old daughter, has figured prominently in my travelogues over the past several years. She is an enthusiastic traveller, and few things bring her greater joy than to go to new places, stay at nice hotels (yes, a vital part of travel for the LO) and generally let her hair down.

Agra is a place we’ve been meaning to go for a while now. Of course the Taj Mahal is iconic, but there are several other wonderful old monuments in the city that my husband and I wanted to see again, and the LO, from seeing photos of the Taj in school textbooks and elsewhere, was eager as well. What’s more, the LO’s best friend has her nanihaal —her maternal grandparents’ home—in Agra. Every few months, the kid goes off to Agra, and of course tells the LO all about it.

(See Part I of this post, here).

After a relaxing couple of days in Nainital, we drove down to Corbett. The Jim Corbett National Park, originally named Hailey National Park (after William Malcolm Hailey, Governor of the United Provinces at the time) was established in 1936 as the first national park in India. In 1956, it was renamed to honour Jim Corbett, the naturalist-hunter so renowned for both preserving wildlife in the Terai as well as helping the local people by killing many man-eaters in the region.

All of this we told the LO about as we journeyed down the Nainital-Kaladhungi stretch towards Corbett. This road is a very scenic one, with miles of forest all along the way. Mist cloaked the pine woods, and when we rolled down the car windows, the fragrance of the pines wafted in.

Those of you who’ve been following this blog for some years may know that I am passionately fond of food. For a while, I reviewed restaurants here, along with all the films I review. One year, I did an entire ‘food film’ project, where I watched many, many food films from across the world and cooked up dishes to accompany them. I devoted the month of October 2018 to food in films.

Yes, I find food just about as interesting as cinema. More, at times.

So this was bound to happen: a book on food. My first non-fiction book, part memoir, part an exploration of food history from around the world, part cookbook.

Before I watched this film, the only other Nargis-Pradeep Kumar films I’d seen were Adalat and Raat aur Din. Both had them playing a married couple, both films had superb music. But they couldn’t have been more unlike each other. Adalat was tiresome, regressive, and depressing; Raat aur Din was intriguing and fast-paced, and overall a good mystery.

One good film, one a dud. Dared I hope that Miss India might be better than Adalat? This was a film I really knew nothing of, except that its music was by SD Burman.

There was only one way to find out: by watching it.

Miss India begins at a graduation ceremony in a Delhi college where the chief guest praises the ‘Miss Indias’, as he dubs them: the educated, self-reliant young women of India, the women who will make good wives for their husbands and good homes for their families. [I roll my eyes and mentally start pushing this into the Adalat slot. Same vibes]. Among the women graduating is the highly accomplished Rama (Nargis), who has graduated in law. [Ah. There has to be a reason for this. There is hope yet].