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FRUITS IN THE HIMALAYAS…& PEACH-ROSEMARY JAM RECIPE

Deeba @ PAB
“Thought is the blossom,language the bud,action the fruit behind.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here’s a little more about our recent trip into the hills, the adventurous beginning of which you can read about in my first post here. This second post is a bit of a fruity one; well mostly anyway. Ramgarh is a serene hill station in the Himalayas, perched at an altitude of about 1800 m above the sea level. It is quite the idyllic place for offbeat leisurely holidays in peace and tranquility, & is known for its fruit orchards and wonderful views of the Himalayas. On clear days you can see the snow-capped ranges of the Himalayas from the windows of the cottage we stayed at. Unfortunately for us, it was quite cloudy & misty the few days we were there for, so we didn’t quite get to see the snow-capped ranges. What we did get to do loads of was enjoy the fruit hanging heavy from the boughs in the orchards surrounding Taradale.
An invigorating & exciting experience. The kids enjoyed it the most, & by the end of our trip, the lad knew which peach was going to be sweet & rightly ripe, & which wasn’t. He literally ate truckloads of peaches. Eventually, I had to stalk him to make sure he didn’t overeat fruit, & fall sick. At any given time, you could find him with a peach in his dirty little hands, the juice flowing down his arms. SIGH! I could visualise the poor birds fighting my lad for ripe fruit…LOL. We would wake up to an orchestra of bird songs every morning, thanks to these fruit laden boughs. The owner of the cottage told us that he’s spotted over 230 species of birds in Ramgarh.Ramgarh is known for orchards of a variety of Himalayan fruits like apples, apricots, and peaches, & this region of the Himalayas is often referred to as ‘the fruit basket of India’.
Around the cottage, the trees were laden with ripe peaches. Plums & apricots were still tart, but yummy if you didn’t mind the sour taste. I certainly didn’t! Pears & apple were still in blossom & young fruit stage. We dug into the peaches big time, & carried some back too. I also brought back a rosemary & a lavendar plant that I luckily tripped across at quite a nondescript little nursery tucked into the hillside. I found the nursery while talking to some sweet local kids, who were being taught by their grandfather, & were ready to go to school. They insisted I sing & dance for them, which I didn’t because my kids looked at me in absolute horror, wondering if I was going to oblige. I fooled around with the naughty mites for a bit & then they set off for school. Schools in the district begin at 10am … why so late one might wonder? …Well, because there is no school transportation available. Little huts dot the countryside for miles, & are very far apart, often in complete wilderness, with no roads, just dirt tracks. It’s quite a revelation to see all the kids go to school, safely walking the distance for hours, even the littlest of them! They seem quite happy with this way of life, & it takes them about an hour, on an average, to get to school. You can see them setting off 9am onwards, & while trekking one morning, we came across students in uniforms all over the hills!

On to the jam now… I made some Peach-Rosemary jam on my return as I was keen to preserve a few peaches, & some memories with them! The son polished off most the the remaining peaches! The daughter prefers mango.

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PEACH-ROSEMARY JAM
adapted from Martha Stewart
Try this jam with yogurt or toast topped with fresh ricotta cheese.
Ingredients
4 pounds yellow peaches, peeled
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
2 cups sugar
4 large sprigs fresh rosemary Method:

More later on the beautiful biodiversity of the hills, a bit about trekking, about the people & the place …

Posted by Deeba @ PAB
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