Am happy to report my friends have returned from Mumbai ans that all-in-all they had a lovely couple of weeks holiday.
One of the highlights was going to a village in Matheran, an out of the way stop-over in the hills which has no roads and no electricity. It is probably something of a dream for lots of people to ride horses to get anywhere. In this valley they were invited into the house of people who had never, as far as they were told, met English people before and the children happily used the digital cameras to take pictures. The Indians also had the art of celebrity off to a tee as they often stopped my friends and asked to have the photographs taken with them.
In the village with a family they could not talk directly to, food was exchanged and gifts and offers of a place to stay when my friends returned. I found myself thinking of the man they found in the ice between Switzerland and Italy who 4,000 years ago died of his wounds in the mountain slopes. I wondered when he wasn’t running if travelling over the mountains he would have found the same welcome from people.
The ancient art of saying hello.