Tea Time 3: Sick Gardens and Short Shorts
byEnough of this mappery, readers, let us get back to beverages-or rather, to the picking of green leaves that will end up in the…
India
Map: Across the Subcontinent
byHere’s an overdue shot of our route. The writing is small, I know, so I’ll spell it out: after landing in Islamabad two months…
Tea Time Part 2: Why We are in Birpara
byThe simplest answer to the question of what my wife and I are doing in Jalpaiguri District, several hundred kilometers off the tourist trail…
The Bengal Bunch: Meet the Cast
byCall it “Four’s Company†or “Leave it to Birpara,†but there’s no doubt: not since the Managua Pimp Tower have I found myself in…
Arrival in Birpara
byBy Indian standards, Birpara (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable: BEER-para) is indeed a small town – 39,000 souls, a number which…
North to Birpara
byOur journey to North Bengal began with a hectic and hot ordeal in Calcutta’s Sealdah Rail Station, where, despite our confirmed a/c sleeper coach…
Date Night in Calcutta
byAlthough still gazing northward toward our new and unknown home in the village of Birpara, Jaipalguri District, we remain wallowing in a character-less strip,…
BBC Tea Worker Photos
byI’m writing from downtown Calcutta, but absorbed in these pictures of the world we are about to enter. For more background, here’s a fact-finding…
Reporting for Duty
byNo longer tourists nor family historians, my wife and I are now members of the worldwide AJWS Volunteer Corps. As such, we have begun…
Indulgence in Delhi
byA brief, business-oriented stopover in the capital brings us long-denied pleasures like beer, meat (chicken, anyway), sheesha smoking, movies, henna, and all manner of…