Today I noticed something fresh; the sound of the human voice floating freely in the air. There is little traffic, no hum of tall buildings. I hear children’s voices and women’s voices and the men, too. Calling out to each other, singing fragments of song. Not competing with anything but the birds and the wind […]
2014 started with a mild winter followed by a huge landslide in the nearby village – trees travelling to new locations, opening new views of the mountains, new beginnings.
March & April marked the start of our yoga season with new teachers joining the growing family of teachers who are returning on a […]
The Rangpurs, known locally as Ghumerees, are all beginning to ripen. It is a cross between an orange and a lemon. Looks like an orange, peels like an orange, segments like an orange, but tastes more like a slightly less tangy lemon.
The way the locals eat it is to make a paste of sugar, […]
Every morning at 5am, I take my cup of tea to the deck and watch the Peacock strut his stuff. His display area is amongst the Basunti flowers, on the meadow below the observation deck. At 8:30am he leaves, looking slightly dejected, all that effort posturing and calling and no results.
This morning […]
Even after the daily depredations of the Barbets, Parakeets and Himalayan Civet Cat, we still managed to harvest over seventy Kilos of organic, Italian peaches, just from one tree. After sharing some with the staff, fifty were put in the fridge for later consumption. The remaining peaches were diced and put in the sun to […]
Rajendra, our truck driver friend, recently celebrated his sons fifth birthday with a big celebration in his honour. This consisted of producing industrial quantities of food and then feeding the entire village. The son helped serve the hundreds of guests that arrived, which is customary in this type of Pooja.
The meal comprised […]
“The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.” Walt Whitman
I had a novel to write. It was neither burning to be written nor demanded by a publisher. But I needed to write, knew that writing a first draft was the toughest graft of all, so I decided on a retreat and […]
We recently rediscovered some photographs of Basunti taken in 2007, and subsequently shot the same angles again to show the tremendous changes that have taken place in just seven years.
In this first image of the main house from 2007 the walls are positively pink and the […]
Tour dates: November 13-25, 2014. (For information or to join, contact us via the contact page or on info@basunti.com).
Our 2014 photography tour will be small and special. Number of participants will be limited in order to allow personal attention from David Bathgate. It will be 12 days of touring and exploring with […]
