ग़ाज़ियाबाद से पहाड़ दूर नहीं, और अब पहाड़ का सामान भी नहीं।
Ghaziabad sits on the road that runs east towards Moradabad and on up to Kumaon, and for hill families here the drive home for a wedding or a festival is a familiar one. Between trips, the store cupboard runs low on the things you only get up there.
This site lets you order them without waiting for the next visit or for someone to bring a bag down. Family shops in the hills list bhatt, gahat, hill rajma, madua and jhangora, jakhiya and ghee, and pack each order themselves. Each product page names the shop and the place, so you can pick one from near your own village if you like. Cash on delivery is available where the shop has switched it on.
Ghughutiya, the Kumaoni Makar Sankranti, is the day ghughute are fried from flour and jaggery and strung into garlands for the children, who call the crows with them the next morning. Hill communities in Ghaziabad and across Delhi NCR hold Uttarayani melas around this time. If the family is not going up this year, the flour, jaggery and ghee for ghughute can come down instead.
Ghaziabad has a sticky monsoon and a foggy, damp winter. Through both, keep dals in a closed steel container and sun them for an hour on a dry afternoon if they feel damp. Pickles do well in their oil, but keep the lid on and use a dry spoon so the moisture in the air does not get in.