बेंगलुरु में रागी तो मिलती है, अब पहाड़ का मंडुआ भी।
In Bengaluru, ragi is everywhere: in mudde, in dosa, in the morning malt. Madua, the hill name for the same grain, is grown on the terraces of Kumaon and Garhwal and ground into a darker, coarser flour in village chakkis, and it makes the rotis that hill families eat with ghee in winter.
The rest of a Pahadi kitchen is harder to find in the city: gahat, bhatt, jakhiya, jambu, a proper garlic loon. Here you order those straight from the family shops in Uttarakhand that make them, and each shop packs and sends its own parcel. The product page shows whether the item is sent to your PIN and whether cash on delivery is available.
On Sankranti, Bengaluru households exchange ellu-bella, the mix of sesame, jaggery, coconut and groundnut, with friends and neighbours. In Kumaon, the same festival is Ghughutiya, when ghughute fried from flour and jaggery are strung into garlands for the children. Jaggery sweets shared with the people around you are the heart of both days.
Bengaluru's mild weather is kind to hill food. Ghee stays soft, honey is slow to crystallise, and pickles keep well in their oil. The monsoon months are damp, so keep loon and dried leaves like jambu in sealed glass jars, and use stone-ground madua within a couple of months.