Today: a beautiful lunch-turned-afternoon at G & V's house all set about with pear trees. T, K & L leave Tuesday and this weekend we've had two bittersweet chances to get together with others of their friends, eat homegrown homemade food, drink homefizzed homebrewed homebottled wine and beer, and wend our ways through two cavernous and mazelike houses (among the oldest in town), making new friends and reconnecting with old ones.

Friday night started off with K & I watching S & her ayah prepare elaborate and beautifully layered mutton biryani. She started with oils from the mutton gravy at the bottom of a huge dekshi, then piled in yellow longgrain rice, mint and coriander, chunks of mutton meat and bone, milk and ghee, repeat. Of course it was much more involved than I can possibly relate here. In fact I really have no idea of how much more there was to this process, but I was glad to bear witness to it. There's something so special about being in the kitchen of a family whose culture is completely foreign to your own watching a special meal come together. Once all the meat and rice was layered properly, the dekshi was placed on the stovetop and the lid was sealed to the dekshi with dough. The end result of this biryani was incredibly delicious, and came after much conversation, as all good meals should.

This afternoon's party was comprised of many of the same people and was very close geographically to S & S's Minas Tirith-like home, but felt completely different. In part this was due to the sunshine, in part because of the differences in hosting styles between Indians and Canadians. G makes his own bread (soft and fluffy), beer (frothy, just the right amount of hops, smooth smooth smooth), and both pear and grape wine. This is in addition to the burgers, yellow raspberry and rhubarb crisp, and guacamole. Am I in India or...where? Definitely India. The company was wonderful--funny, odd, quirky and filled with digging for details about how your partner in conversation came to this hill station. Lots of old-comers to this place were present today, lots of folks with history here, whose families have roots here, who very possibly could be here forever.

At one point we walked out a little way into the pear orchard to see a gaur, or bison, munching on grass and intimidating us with his massive horns. I couldn't stop thinking of the skeletons we've happened upon when hiking--the sheer bulk of the bones, the weight of the skull.