Joanna Lumley's India (2017) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
This is the meeting place of three great expanses of water.
To the east, the bay of Bengal.
To the west, the Arabian Sea and here behind me to the south, the mighty Indian Ocean.
I'm on the southern-most tip of one of the most intriguing, bewildering and thrilling countries on Earth.
I'm here with thousands of other people to celebrate the dawn.
It's the beginning of a new day, it's the start of my journey.
Come with me through India! I was born in India and for several generations of my family before me, this was their home.
This is my parents getting married, up in Srinagar in 1941.
This was my mother as she looked then.
And this is my father as he looked then.
Although I left India only a year old, because when Partition came, all the British had to leave, erm, it was really my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who had the memories of India, because India was their home.
Despite having lived there for so much of their lives, my parents said it's impossible to know India properly.
This is going to be daunting, but terribly exciting.
It's not really windy at all here.
Luckily I've managed to get my hair smoothed down.
Ready for my next shot, Mr DeMille.
This year, the country of over 1.
3b people is celebrating 70 years of independence.
Watch out, bubba.
I'm gonna travel 5,000 miles to some of the more remote and unexpected corners of this vast nation.
What is this?! From the desert camels of Rajasthan This is my first sip of camel milk.
.
.
to the transsexuals of Calcutta.
This is a difficult world you live in.
- We are girls.
- You are girls.
Sometimes I shall be walking in my family's footsteps.
Here's my uncle.
There's Ivor! Glimpsing the opulent splendour of India's royal past.
Mirrors on the ceiling in case I wanted to look at myself.
I'll encounter the suffering endured by India's Untouchables They poured kerosene on his body and just burnt him alive.
.
.
gatecrash a Hindu housewarming.
And experience the kaleidoscope of contradiction I'm sorry.
.
.
that makes modern India so captivating.
- Lovely.
- Oh, my gosh.
Look at that colour.
You are very, very kind.
Thank you so much.
Welcome to India.
The first of my three journeys through this vast subcontinent will take me 1,500 miles from the very south through the mountains of the western Ghats, to the Islamic city of Hyderabad, the former imperial capital Calcutta, and ending in the foothills of the Himalayas in Sikkim, where 90 years ago, my grandfather, Colonel Leslie Weir, was stationed.
But my first port of call is the ancient and holy city of Madurai.
The people here used to trade with ancient Rome and today its streets are still an assault of colour and confusion.
- These are beautiful garlands.
- Yes, yes.
And this is tuberose? What is this? - No smell.
- No smell? Why? - For God.
- Oh! The smell is for the god? That's terrible.
Hinduism is the world's oldest religion and for over 5,000 years has shaped India.
So the most holy shrine in the south, the dazzling Meenakshi temple, guarded by 14 magnificent sculpture-festooned towers, is a fitting place for me to begin.
It's almost older than time and to the people living around here, trading around here, it's like a magnet so people are bringing Well, you can see.
They're parking their bikes here but there are little shops selling stuff.
Flowers, gifts.
It's a flourishing part of it, it's the centre, it's the soul of it.
It's as if to the thousand million, which is a billion, Hindus in India, that this plethora of gods and avatars and reincarnations is just essential to their daily life.
The temple is surrounded by a maze of shops and stalls and the enticing-sounding tailors' market.
In the past, it used to host festivals and ceremonies.
Then the fabric merchants, haberdashers and tailors moved in and made it their home.
Gosh, gosh, gosh.
It goes on and on and on.
- Would you be able to make me something? - Yeah.
- To make me a shirt, something like that? - Everything we make here.
That's rather lovely, isn't it? Some checks, some stripes, some plain.
I think I'm thinking check would be nice.
Check? Whatever you like, ma'am.
Check, you can select.
This is pretty tasty, isn't it? I think that's rather divine.
- Yes, OK.
A 32.
- 32? - 38 there.
- Please don't listen to this.
I'm going to dub over it afterwards.
It's going to say 36-24-37.
When I was a model You'll never believe this.
When I was a model, I was 34-24-35.
What's happened? I've literally trebled Trebled in size.
It's lovely.
Hinduism and its 33m gods can be bewildering, to say the least.
Wow, look at this.
At night, this temple comes alive with all sorts of elaborate religious ceremonies.
This is a very holy part of the ground and people prostrate themselves .
.
because they believe that from here the ground resonates great strength so you can draw it up into your body and become stronger and better.
Oh, look.
Look what's coming.
The trumpets are starting.
Here it comes.
I can't be sure which way it's gonna turn.
You can just see in the middle the god Shiva.
There's a crowd just following on behind.
It's so strange.
I feel like I'm back in Medieval, pre-Medieval days.
Of course, this has been going on since before any other religions even began.
This ceremony has been performed every night for thousands of years.
It celebrates the love between Lord Shiva and his escort, Parvati, culminating in their union in the bedchamber.
Peacock Peacock feathers to waft the incense around.
Something quite extraordinary.
It's so complex and so complicated and yet, just as an onlooker, and an outsider, and a well-wisher, I feel completely included.
Hello, sweetheart.
It's gorgeous, extraordinarily ancient.
I think this is one of the oldest continuously used holy sites in the entire world ever.
Ravishing.
There's a long drive ahead of me today so I think a spot of lunch before I set off.
Southern India is traditionally vegetarian and India, as a whole, has one of the lowest consumption of meat per capita in the world.
I've never eaten rice and things with my hands before, but I'm not doing it properly, but if you watch people doing it here so skilful and lovely.
Oh, this I could eat with impunity.
She says, spitting But I don't quite know how to eat this.
Mm! It's absolutely delicious.
It's just a few hours drive to the Western Ghats, the magnificent mountain range that runs the length of India's west coast.
Despite the introduction of colonial farming, this region remains rich in flora and fauna and it also provides the perfect climate for growing tea.
Oh, here he is.
On the way I'm meeting up with an old family friend, Robin Brown, who's spent half his life travelling all over India on his beloved Royal Enfield bike.
- My goodness sake! - Finally! After all these times.
- Gosh, it's been ten years.
- Ten years? - I'm afraid it has.
Robin says it's the only way to travel.
What you have to do is not do any wobbling.
I'm not going to do any wobbling.
I was trained in The Avengers, if you remember.
Windy, windy road, this.
All the motor This is a famous motorbike road.
Don't take me fast, will you? No, no, no.
We were just fooling around here.
Wow.
Look at this.
Robin's mother and mine were life-long friends, and shared a love of India.
- Yeah, I miss our mothers.
- I know.
So do I, like mad.
They were They had commonsense.
I think all that generation had, the wartime.
The love of economy is the root of all wisdom.
Yes, that's true.
This insane road has over 40 perilous hairpin bends and climbs 3,500 feet up to the Valparai Plateau.
It looks beautiful now, but all this used to be pristine forest.
120 years ago, two Englishmen named Wintil and Norden, saw the potential and cut down 70% of the trees and planted some tea.
It used to be rainforest, but now it's just tea estates rippling over all the hills.
This small town is called Valparai and I'm meeting some people who are going to tell me about an extremely important elephant programme that they've got.
These mountains have been the home of the Indian elephants since time immemorial.
But with so many tea workers in the area, chance encounters with wild elephants have resulted in up to five deaths a year.
In an attempt to reduce the casualties, the tea companies funded a team of scientists who can now track the elephants and warn people of their whereabouts.
So how do you find out where an elephant is? Not with field glasses and not by listening.
How do you do that? - They're so far away.
- The beautiful thing about this place is there's a lot of communication that happens.
So even if elephants have been spotted about 30, 40, 50 kilometres away it just takes one phone call to inform the necessary concerned people.
This seems a very clever way of doing it.
Which is avoidance, rather than confrontation.
Please, this might be an elephant calling you! - That is one of our guys.
Can I just take this call? - Please do.
Please do.
Thanks.
Sorry, just elephants.
You know, they don't care about time.
They just dial with their beautiful tiny fingers.
Some wild elephants have been detected just a few miles into the hills and I'm invited to tag along.
For the elephants, this is all too noisy for them.
They'd never come into town and be interested in the vegetables or anything like that.
It's never happened during the day.
But they've come very close to the town area at night.
They're elusive, but the elephants leave some big clues for Ganesh and Sreedhar to pick up on.
Oh, you've got your gloves, your forensic gloves.
It's not very old.
About a day and a half.
When you're studying individual animals, do you get to know them? Do you identify one from the other? We do have names for the elephants.
So for some of our regular individuals are named with 'S.
' So we have Sylvia, Sultana, Saviella, Streep and so on.
Streep? After Meryl? - Yes.
- She must be pleased! When you have a 'J' one, will you call it Joanna? Absolutely.
We can have a herd with 'J.
' - I can't tell you how much I would like that.
- Sure.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
They are definitely around here.
We'll have to look for some more signs.
- These are marks made by the tushes.
- The tushes? - Females have shorter - Shorter ones.
- Yeah.
This is getting some smell of elephants.
- Did you get that smell? - I did, I smelled it.
- What is that? - That pungent odour is the elephant smell.
They're somewhere around.
They've broken this whole thing.
It's a fallen tree and they feed on the bark.
They actually Just keep going ahead.
Wild Indian elephants take shelter in the dense jungle during the heat of the day, making them notoriously difficult to see.
Maddeningly, we have to admit defeat.
Well, this has been a thrilling morning because even though we didn't see the beautiful elephant, we've seen so much evidence of it and best of all, I've smelled them and I know that they're just over there.
In a way, it's rather marvellous that nature doesn't just come to your command.
You can't just say, "I'd like to see the elephant.
" You can't do it like that.
But then, on the way back to base .
.
we get a call.
There, there.
There, there.
They're stepping.
A mother and a calf.
This is terribly exciting.
A small group of excited people.
- You see the ear flapping? - Yes! Yes! - There she is.
- How amazing.
It would have been heartbreaking not to have seen something as beautiful as this.
But our luck doesn't stop there.
I think there's Yes! This is extraordinary.
And another one, and another one Just quietly coming in their own sweet order.
Quite a small one skittering about, running around.
A really huge female, isn't she? Oh, look at you, sweetheart.
The work of Ganesh and the team has drastically reduced fatal elephant encounters.
In fact, in the last few years there have been no fatal incidents and man and elephant have co-existed in relative harmony.
Look at that little person hidden amongst the tea.
They're heading down to the swamp and the little baby It The head is hardly above the tea bushes.
So it puts its nose on its mother's flank and off they go.
I'm so, so thrilled.
One of the great dreams of my life to see an Indian elephant in the wild.
Thanks, Ganesh.
Thank you so much.
I'm reluctant to leave the fresh air of the mountains, but one of India's most enthralling cities and some high-tech cosmic creation awaits.
Goddess 600 miles north from Valparai is the city of Hyderabad.
The stunning Islamic architecture instantly makes it feel exotic and I, like a magpie, have been tempted here by all that glitters.
Bangles.
Mounds and mounds and mounds of bangles.
Apart from the fruit and vegetable stalls, the markets are full of jewellery.
Aren't these pretty? This one here is very beautiful.
- Yeah.
- Very beautiful, yeah.
It's so gorgeous to be talking here amongst these gorgeous girls about bling, and this is actually the city of bling.
This is sort of where bling all started.
The nearby Golconda mines were, for 2,000 years, the only source of diamonds in the world and Hyderabad is still a hub for all things sparkly with millions of pounds traded in gems and precious stones.
That seems extraordinary that nobody found diamonds in the world until here.
This was the first and only, first known source for diamonds as currency in the world.
Look, it fits.
How lovely, thank you.
Look at this.
Look at these rubies.
We've got sapphire, citrine -- We have nine gems denoting the nine planets.
Here you can have emerald, Mercury.
The yellow sapphire, Jupiter.
Pearl, moon.
And we have the shukra, the Venus planet surrounding all the gem stones in the form of diamonds.
It's absolutely stunning.
But Hyderabad has something even more glitzy to offer.
A new emerging industry is giving Bollywood a run for its money.
It produces over 150 films a year in the Telegu language.
Welcome to Tollywood! Eclipsing anything in Hollywood, the city now boasts the world's biggest film studio complex and Tollywood's latest high-action blockbuster just smashed Indian box office records, making over a quarter of a billion dollars.
Tollywood is known for being at the cutting edge for digital innovation and one of the companies that's leading the way is Firefly Creative Studio.
Welcome to Firefly.
This is the visual effects studio.
I don't know what I was expecting, but this is extraordinary.
Can you tell me, kind of, what's happening? On a film, what we cannot pull off physically, we sort of fool people by creating them digitally.
- Yes.
- Think of it as an illusion within an illusion.
- Yes.
- That's what we do.
What's going on? Here's a tiger crashing into the ground.
Imagine getting a real tiger to do that.
It would never obey you.
- No.
- So that's a digital tiger.
- A digital tiger? And a real man? - And a real man.
- In a real forest? - In a real forest.
- You can draw anything, can't you? Yeah, pretty much anything.
- So we do the first set of arms.
- Yeah.
- You will take this position.
- Yeah.
These creatives think big and have a leading lady role for me.
So this will be in the left hand.
- Yeah.
- You need to maintain a nice smile.
That is very important.
Yeah.
Very good, very good.
- OK.
- I'm just looking for symmetry.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
I'm getting to love this.
Goddess In some way, I feel I was born for the role.
Thank you.
Thank you and bless you.
I think that's enough of that.
Over 900 miles north-east of Hyderabad lies the legendary city of Calcutta, at the mouth of the Ganges Delta.
For nearly 150 years, it was the capital of British India and I'm pretty sure most of my ancestors will have been here at one time or another.
It was known as the City of Palaces and in the mid-19th century laid claim to being the second city of the Empire after London.
But back in 1698, it was just a string of villages on the Ganges.
Then the East India Company bought some land and started exporting all sorts of commodities.
Trade flourished.
Trade in cotton, in jute, I'm afraid in opium.
And the city grew richer and richer, gained in status, and eventually became the capital of India under British rule.
Since Calcutta's heyday, conflict and politics have conspired to bring harder times upon the city.
Some remnants of colonial architecture remain, but these days the city is famed for its revolutionary spirit and its delicious street food.
And I have a rather dashing companion to show me the sights.
We're going past somewhere.
I'm going to turn my face this way in case I think this is gentlemen's lavatories.
Ifte, you take me to the nicest places.
You spoil me.
This is Ifte.
He's a local guy and he knows everything about everything and he's pretty damn cool.
Ooh, look at this.
What are they cooking here? - He's making what we call dal pakoras.
- Yeah.
- Pakoras are made with lentils.
- Yeah.
Beautiful stuff.
I call these guys micro-entrepreneurs.
- Yeah.
- These are guys on the street who are taking little ingredients and creating magic out of that and selling it to you and making a decent living for himself - and his family.
- This is lovely.
Is this just water that just flows and flows? This is why so many people migrated here.
- Yeah.
- Because this is a city where the river water - and water was flowing freely throughout the city.
- Yeah.
- You don't get that in many cities.
- No, you don't.
Tonnes of water in Calcutta.
So nobody's gonna come and phone the water board and say there's a tap leaking? That's supposed to be like that? It's supposed to be like that.
It's the clean water by the municipality.
So much of Calcutta is left with these old remains - of memories of Britain.
- Right.
How is Britain seen by By Particularly by West Bengal today? Is there any affection left for us? Say something nice! Cos I'm watching.
And remember, I'm a Kashmiri! So say something nice! But what is the feeling? Cos I've got to say, we in Britain, we adore India.
Calcutta, as a city, gained from the British occupation.
So most things that work in Calcutta - were the ones that were set up by the British.
- Yeah.
- Things like what? - Like, say, the sewage system.
Or the pavements.
- Yes.
- Most Indian cities haven't managed to have pavements like this.
People like my grandparents, they look back on the British days, - as the days of order.
- Yeah.
- You know? - There wasn't so much chaos all around.
- No.
People also realise, Joanna, that it was the elite in the British society and the elites in the Indian society who colluded and whatever they did, looted, pillaged, plundered, whatever happened, happened between those guys.
The average British person has almost nothing to do with it - as much as the average Indian person.
- No, that's right.
People realise that.
- This is lovely.
Look at this.
- This is our most popular street food.
You have to try this.
Puffed rice mixed with peanuts, chickpea.
- Yeah.
- It's all roasted, so it's all healthy stuff.
- It's a cupboard.
- Yeah! Look at this.
It's fantastic.
- But there's a way we do it.
- Oh, right.
I did it wrong? I so did that wrong.
I did my niminy-piminy little hands.
Thank you.
Now you're Now you're going native! On the streets of Calcutta, it's impossible not to be moved by seeing what people with very little money have to endure.
For women, it's especially hard living in a country with an appalling record of gender discrimination and violence.
West Bengal has over 30,000 transgenders, most of them in Calcutta, and life for them can be particularly difficult.
Luknat, how old are you? - 26.
- 26.
Shintu? - 24.
- 24.
Rajkumar? - I'm 25.
- And 25.
Luknat, Shintu and Rajkumar are men who want to become women.
If you can, Rajkumar, will you have the full operation? Shintu, were your parents happy, sad, when they knew that you were going to be a girl? This is a difficult world you live in.
It's like a twilight world.
In here you're girls.
You are girls.
In some ways, India is ahead of the West.
In 2014, they legally recognised the third gender.
But not everyone shares this tolerant view.
Many trans people still face violent discrimination and have to resort to begging or sex work to make money.
So you think that if you weren't earning money, they wouldn't be so accepting of you? You will survive.
You will triumph.
Yes! In the meantime, you are all my daughters.
Thank you.
Sweethearts.
Chin, chin, chin, chin.
Cheers.
Calcutta is fascinating.
And tomorrow, another surprise when I step back in time to a lost and magical world.
Oh, my gosh! In the days of the British Empire, great fortunes were made in Calcutta from India's raw materials.
Cotton is the best known, but equally important in its day was jute, a reed grown in rivers here in West Bengal.
50 years ago, before plastic, this sack cloth was used for literally everything.
It's still big business in India and Latta Bajoria, at the age of 67, runs her own jute empire.
So when was this little mill built? I say little, it's colossal.
Two storeys high.
At least 150 years old.
- As old as that? - Yes, yes.
- This is jute? - Yes.
- It looks like my hair.
No, this is a dirty piece of jute.
When you see the real raw jute, that will be like your hair.
Ah! Look at this.
This is what is called the raw jute.
It's fantastic.
It's so soft and lovely.
Oh, look at this.
It's like climbing It's like climbing erm, in a barn.
- You can bounce also.
- It's soft.
Children's playground.
Yes.
It is called the golden fibre.
We make it into sacks, or the fabric also.
- So you make all that here? - We make everything.
- Everything we make here.
- It can't be used as fodder, can it? - No, I don't think so.
- Nothing eats it.
I'd eat it.
I think it looks lovely.
No, I don't think it's edible.
Latta knew nothing about the jute industry and when her husband died, she was expected to sell up.
But she defied the naysayers and took on this and two even bigger mills.
Oh, my gosh! She's allowing me onto the factory floor to see how raw jute is combed, twisted, and woven into a coarse sack cloth.
I feel as though I've stepped back 150 years being here.
It's quite overwhelming.
These beautiful old machines, all very specific to what their job is.
All the particles of jute in the air.
Terribly bad for the lungs.
But look at these.
Aren't they just fabulous? The Scottish city of Dundee was Britain's jute capital where, in the 19th century, there were around 100 factories just like this.
Everything from coal to potatoes was stored and transported in sacks made of jute.
At the height of the Empire, production shifted to India.
Later, in the post-war period, with the rise of plastics and cheaper alternatives, jute fell out of fashion.
Oh, look.
"Mackie & Sons Limited.
Belfast.
" James Mackie.
I think his descendants will be pleased to see that his machines are still working.
In these days of sustainability, with many countries making moves to get rid of plastic, I think it's time this amazing, multi-purpose, natural fibre had a renaissance.
And this is where all the sacks are.
- Yes.
- To think that this fine thing, this fine stamped product, firm, it's actually become a cloth, came from this little plant.
This beautiful little blonde plant.
This is jute.
Latta, we have to bring back jute.
Jute is in its ascendancy again.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I cannot thank you enough for letting me see round your extraordinary jute mill.
- I will never forget it.
- I'm happy to be called the Jute Baroness.
You are the Jute Baroness.
400 miles north of Calcutta lies the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim.
Sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan on the Chinese border, it's India's least-populated and second-smallest state.
It means a lot to me because it's where my grandfather was stationed for many years and where my mother grew up.
Jason, look at that bridge! Some quite scary bits of the road where there are Somebody's gone over.
We won't go over, will we? (No.
) Welcome to Kalimpong.
I'm so thrilled to be here, you know, Jason, because all these names are so familiar from my Particularly my mother's childhood.
They must have made these journeys and the roads weren't as good as this, were they? Long, long journeys.
For over 300 years, Sikkim was an independent country with its own royal family, before becoming part of India in 1975.
As a foreigner, I still have to show my passport to enter.
You can't just come into this place because it's It's actually a completely different state.
And because it's strategically so important with China, with erm, Bhutan, with Nepal, it's right up like that.
So got to go in here and Little, sort of, good luck jockey monkey, ready to carry anything I need.
Quite nice.
All of Sikkim is mountainous, and on the border with Nepal, it rises to the magnificent peak of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
On a clear day you can see its spectacular five peaks from the capital, Gangtok, so I have my fingers firmly crossed for fine weather.
Of course, it's not absolutely necessary to take this ropeway, or sort of cable car, across Gangtok to see it, but I think it would just be a thrilling way to, sort of, to get the lie of the land and these great valleys.
It looks as though it's completely packed and I'm being filmed.
Ticket, ticket, ticket.
It's bit misty, but I think we'll be able to see something.
It's an extraordinary town.
It's absolutely built on the sides of the Of the hill.
Sweet Himalayan air.
You can hear shots in the distance.
Of course, this part of Sikkim is so .
.
erm, sensitive.
A huge army presence.
And you can be sure that's not shooting wild animals cos they're not allowed to do that in India.
Army practice.
As an army brat, I should know that.
Gosh, this is a mass of Buddhist prayer flags.
They believe that all the prayers which are written on the flags, as the wind blows, the prayers and blessings are released into the world which is why they're quite often put where the mountain air can take them.
When the cloud lifts, and it will, I'll be staring at the five peaks of Kangchenjunga and they're terribly important to the people of Sikkim because when Armageddon comes, when the end of the world comes, everything that you need is going to be stored in these five peaks.
Each one has a different precious substance.
Salt.
Turquoise, gold and precious metals.
Sacred scriptures.
Arms and ammunition.
Grain and, strangely enough, medicine which are grouped together.
So you go to one of those five mountains and you'll get those things and live forever, particularly if you're Sikkimese.
Well, beautiful mountain, I've paid you the greatest respect by not even looking at you.
I'm so disappointed! I so wanted to see Kangchenjunga.
You know, you've got to embrace it, put on a cheesy grin and go, "Hey, that's life.
" But sometime I'll come and see you.
But the real revelation is when I meet Sikkim royalty and delve into the past.
- Is it from Grandpa? - Mm-hm.
This letter here.
Gosh, this is one of my grandfather's letters.
So here I am in Sikkim, in Gangtok, which is the capital of Sikkim.
I'm terribly excited to be here because there was a place called the Residency which is a rather grand name for actually, now what is called the Governor's Lodge or something.
It's where Well, the resident, the political officer lived, at the time that my mother was a child and I've found some pictures here of her at the Residency.
With Granny, fooling around in fancy dress.
Here's a garden and her with her little pony.
You can seen in the background behind the fence the land seems just to fall away.
So here you can see it's pretty much at the edge of a precipice.
You can see the hills coming down here and I think probably the hills going down there.
I wonder if I'll get to see it? I'd so love to see where she spent her childhood years riding in the hills and mucking about with dogs and learning about plants and things.
But before I can go searching for the Residency I've been invited somewhere very special.
For over 300 years, this Himalayan kingdom was ruled by a Buddhist monarchy.
When Sikkim became part of India in 1975, this dynasty was abolished.
Pema and Dechen are two young members of the deposed royal family.
They've offered to show me round this exquisite temple.
- So lovely to have you.
- It's lovely to be in Sikkim.
This is the Sikkim Tsuklakhan.
It was originally where all ceremonies and important prayer rituals would take place for the royal family or for the benefit of Sikkim.
It's stunning, isn't it? Just got little monks upstairs.
We have about 132 monks here erm, who are eventually going to be responsible for carrying on our unique Buddhist traditions - for the next generation.
- Otherwise it would die out, wouldn't it? This building is simply beautiful.
Can you describe this, what looks like a furious god, but with all kinds of Tell me what some of these images are.
Outside of monasteries, typically one has the guardian protectors - of the four directions.
- They have that in Hindu temples as well and they always have moustaches.
- The guardians, is that right? - This one also has a moustache.
These two have got moustaches.
Absolutely stunning.
Typically when we go in, we do prostration.
Show me how this is.
- One.
Two.
- One here near the chest.
And then down.
And you touch your forehead.
What a fantastic, fantastic figure that is.
In the middle erm, is Guru Rinpoche.
He's the patron saint of Sikkim.
Who is responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet in the 800s.
So this must be an extremely important place.
It is considered one of the most sacred places in Tibetan Buddhism.
Wow.
Guru Rinpoche also made a prophecy that many years later four lamas, or holy men, one from each point of the compass, would meet in Sikkim and crown the one from the East as the divine ruler.
Has His Holiness been here? His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has been here a few times.
- Has he? - Yes.
- In fact, the ties with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and er, the royal family here, they go back long back, so he always makes it a point to try and stop here in Sikkim and meet the Chogyal at the palace.
How wonderful.
What is the position now of the Chogyal, the royal family, within India? Is he still seen as kind of a king and ruler? Or is it more titular? Is it more It's very titular and only really in the eyes of legitimacy and the Sikkimese.
Does that ever cause problems? No, look.
Say nothing more.
Just down the road from this glorious temple is the Residency, where my mother grew up.
But unfortunately, getting to what is now a government building is proving tricky.
What used to be called the Residency in my grandfather's day and is now called the Raj Bhavan, the governor's palace, I think .
.
has denied us access.
I can't believe it.
I had longed to see this more than anything.
It's just quite a simple house.
I've got the photographs of it Why does it break my heart? Because I've got the pictures, it's only a garden.
I'm not asking to do anything diplomatic.
I'm just saying, "Can I see the garden where my mother grew up?" And the answer, I think, is pretty much no.
So there we are.
No matter.
Pema and Dechen have an intriguing new project to show me.
After uncovering a treasure trove of long-lost files and letters in a New York attic, the girls have set about archiving and digitising a royal history of Sikkim.
So our first project is the digitisation of the Sikkim palace archives which is a collection of 100,000 documents from 1875 to 1975.
So just tell me, it all looks like modern computers.
- Where are these old, old papers? - I'll let Dechen explain! If you'd like to follow me.
So this is where all the files are prepared before they're digitised.
I have an example here.
- Actually, if you'd like to maybe - I will.
Gloves.
- Thank you.
- Then you can examine them closer.
- Look at that.
- This is from one of the political officers at the time, Charles Bell.
- Charles Bell? I met his daughter.
- Did you? - Yeah.
So this is May 1910.
- He was one of the predecessors of my grandfather.
- Yes.
We actually have some documents and files in which your grandfather is mentioned.
Colonel Weir? Oh, my gosh.
"My dear Maharaja.
" Who's this from, do you think? Would you like to take a guess? It isn't? Is it from Grandpa? - Mm-hm.
This letter, yes.
- Oh, my gosh.
This is one of my grandfather's letters.
"Political officer, Sikkim, 1930.
" Oh, my gosh.
Look at this, isn't it fantastic? Referring to There's a dispute going on.
The dispute between Sikkim and Tibet boundaries.
It's the devdra state.
So my grandfather's suggesting there's a meeting to talk about it.
He's being a diplomat, which is what his job was.
And here's a letter from His Highness.
Look at that ravishing paper.
"My dear Colonel Weir.
Thank you very much for your kind letter.
I quite agree with you that ill feelings in the Raj family has undesirable effects.
I'll try my best to fully discuss the matter in any personal meeting which you may consider desirable.
Kindest regards, best wishes to both of you.
Yours sincerely " Very, crossed out.
Not "Very sincerely," just "sincerely.
" Little bit cooling off there.
"Cross that out, it's too much.
" - And which signature is this? - This is Tashi Mangyal, - another Chogyal.
- How fascinating.
We have a letter from our great-grandfather to your grandfather.
- So we're linked forever? - We're linked, yes.
I tell you, emails are not as good.
No.
How extraordinary.
I could have spent days poring over those letters, but there was more excitement to come.
I cannot tell you what's just happened.
I was saying to Pema and Dechen how sad I was that I couldn't get to see the old Residency, my mother's old home.
So Dechen pulled a few strings and Tsegyal, her father, is taking me round! I'm afraid I can't take the riff-raff, the crew with me, I'm gonna go on my own and I must go now otherwise the gates will be slammed again.
This is fabulous news! It was so kind of Dechen's father to take me round there.
It's still the same.
It's got additions to it and it's been much spruced up.
It's got now tarmac and it's been painted out of existence.
The bit at the edge where I see my mother, sitting on her pony as a child, and what looked like a sheer drop behind her, the sheer drop is now filled with new buildings and the big, new, very, very grand governor's palace and so on.
I only ever saw it in black-and-white photographs.
Now today, I got a chance to see what it was like and smell the air and to see the trees and see what it would have been like to be here.
And I swear, I saw dancing amongst the flowerbeds, the little spirit of my eight-year-old mother with her dogs and her pony.
Fabulous.
Next time, the surprising mega city Mumbai This feels like California coming down here.
.
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the devastating plight of the Untouchables Thank you, my dear.
Bless you.
.
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and onto the desert state of Rajasthan Hello, girls.
.
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and Maharajan opulence.
I've never seen anything like it.
To the east, the bay of Bengal.
To the west, the Arabian Sea and here behind me to the south, the mighty Indian Ocean.
I'm on the southern-most tip of one of the most intriguing, bewildering and thrilling countries on Earth.
I'm here with thousands of other people to celebrate the dawn.
It's the beginning of a new day, it's the start of my journey.
Come with me through India! I was born in India and for several generations of my family before me, this was their home.
This is my parents getting married, up in Srinagar in 1941.
This was my mother as she looked then.
And this is my father as he looked then.
Although I left India only a year old, because when Partition came, all the British had to leave, erm, it was really my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who had the memories of India, because India was their home.
Despite having lived there for so much of their lives, my parents said it's impossible to know India properly.
This is going to be daunting, but terribly exciting.
It's not really windy at all here.
Luckily I've managed to get my hair smoothed down.
Ready for my next shot, Mr DeMille.
This year, the country of over 1.
3b people is celebrating 70 years of independence.
Watch out, bubba.
I'm gonna travel 5,000 miles to some of the more remote and unexpected corners of this vast nation.
What is this?! From the desert camels of Rajasthan This is my first sip of camel milk.
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to the transsexuals of Calcutta.
This is a difficult world you live in.
- We are girls.
- You are girls.
Sometimes I shall be walking in my family's footsteps.
Here's my uncle.
There's Ivor! Glimpsing the opulent splendour of India's royal past.
Mirrors on the ceiling in case I wanted to look at myself.
I'll encounter the suffering endured by India's Untouchables They poured kerosene on his body and just burnt him alive.
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gatecrash a Hindu housewarming.
And experience the kaleidoscope of contradiction I'm sorry.
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that makes modern India so captivating.
- Lovely.
- Oh, my gosh.
Look at that colour.
You are very, very kind.
Thank you so much.
Welcome to India.
The first of my three journeys through this vast subcontinent will take me 1,500 miles from the very south through the mountains of the western Ghats, to the Islamic city of Hyderabad, the former imperial capital Calcutta, and ending in the foothills of the Himalayas in Sikkim, where 90 years ago, my grandfather, Colonel Leslie Weir, was stationed.
But my first port of call is the ancient and holy city of Madurai.
The people here used to trade with ancient Rome and today its streets are still an assault of colour and confusion.
- These are beautiful garlands.
- Yes, yes.
And this is tuberose? What is this? - No smell.
- No smell? Why? - For God.
- Oh! The smell is for the god? That's terrible.
Hinduism is the world's oldest religion and for over 5,000 years has shaped India.
So the most holy shrine in the south, the dazzling Meenakshi temple, guarded by 14 magnificent sculpture-festooned towers, is a fitting place for me to begin.
It's almost older than time and to the people living around here, trading around here, it's like a magnet so people are bringing Well, you can see.
They're parking their bikes here but there are little shops selling stuff.
Flowers, gifts.
It's a flourishing part of it, it's the centre, it's the soul of it.
It's as if to the thousand million, which is a billion, Hindus in India, that this plethora of gods and avatars and reincarnations is just essential to their daily life.
The temple is surrounded by a maze of shops and stalls and the enticing-sounding tailors' market.
In the past, it used to host festivals and ceremonies.
Then the fabric merchants, haberdashers and tailors moved in and made it their home.
Gosh, gosh, gosh.
It goes on and on and on.
- Would you be able to make me something? - Yeah.
- To make me a shirt, something like that? - Everything we make here.
That's rather lovely, isn't it? Some checks, some stripes, some plain.
I think I'm thinking check would be nice.
Check? Whatever you like, ma'am.
Check, you can select.
This is pretty tasty, isn't it? I think that's rather divine.
- Yes, OK.
A 32.
- 32? - 38 there.
- Please don't listen to this.
I'm going to dub over it afterwards.
It's going to say 36-24-37.
When I was a model You'll never believe this.
When I was a model, I was 34-24-35.
What's happened? I've literally trebled Trebled in size.
It's lovely.
Hinduism and its 33m gods can be bewildering, to say the least.
Wow, look at this.
At night, this temple comes alive with all sorts of elaborate religious ceremonies.
This is a very holy part of the ground and people prostrate themselves .
.
because they believe that from here the ground resonates great strength so you can draw it up into your body and become stronger and better.
Oh, look.
Look what's coming.
The trumpets are starting.
Here it comes.
I can't be sure which way it's gonna turn.
You can just see in the middle the god Shiva.
There's a crowd just following on behind.
It's so strange.
I feel like I'm back in Medieval, pre-Medieval days.
Of course, this has been going on since before any other religions even began.
This ceremony has been performed every night for thousands of years.
It celebrates the love between Lord Shiva and his escort, Parvati, culminating in their union in the bedchamber.
Peacock Peacock feathers to waft the incense around.
Something quite extraordinary.
It's so complex and so complicated and yet, just as an onlooker, and an outsider, and a well-wisher, I feel completely included.
Hello, sweetheart.
It's gorgeous, extraordinarily ancient.
I think this is one of the oldest continuously used holy sites in the entire world ever.
Ravishing.
There's a long drive ahead of me today so I think a spot of lunch before I set off.
Southern India is traditionally vegetarian and India, as a whole, has one of the lowest consumption of meat per capita in the world.
I've never eaten rice and things with my hands before, but I'm not doing it properly, but if you watch people doing it here so skilful and lovely.
Oh, this I could eat with impunity.
She says, spitting But I don't quite know how to eat this.
Mm! It's absolutely delicious.
It's just a few hours drive to the Western Ghats, the magnificent mountain range that runs the length of India's west coast.
Despite the introduction of colonial farming, this region remains rich in flora and fauna and it also provides the perfect climate for growing tea.
Oh, here he is.
On the way I'm meeting up with an old family friend, Robin Brown, who's spent half his life travelling all over India on his beloved Royal Enfield bike.
- My goodness sake! - Finally! After all these times.
- Gosh, it's been ten years.
- Ten years? - I'm afraid it has.
Robin says it's the only way to travel.
What you have to do is not do any wobbling.
I'm not going to do any wobbling.
I was trained in The Avengers, if you remember.
Windy, windy road, this.
All the motor This is a famous motorbike road.
Don't take me fast, will you? No, no, no.
We were just fooling around here.
Wow.
Look at this.
Robin's mother and mine were life-long friends, and shared a love of India.
- Yeah, I miss our mothers.
- I know.
So do I, like mad.
They were They had commonsense.
I think all that generation had, the wartime.
The love of economy is the root of all wisdom.
Yes, that's true.
This insane road has over 40 perilous hairpin bends and climbs 3,500 feet up to the Valparai Plateau.
It looks beautiful now, but all this used to be pristine forest.
120 years ago, two Englishmen named Wintil and Norden, saw the potential and cut down 70% of the trees and planted some tea.
It used to be rainforest, but now it's just tea estates rippling over all the hills.
This small town is called Valparai and I'm meeting some people who are going to tell me about an extremely important elephant programme that they've got.
These mountains have been the home of the Indian elephants since time immemorial.
But with so many tea workers in the area, chance encounters with wild elephants have resulted in up to five deaths a year.
In an attempt to reduce the casualties, the tea companies funded a team of scientists who can now track the elephants and warn people of their whereabouts.
So how do you find out where an elephant is? Not with field glasses and not by listening.
How do you do that? - They're so far away.
- The beautiful thing about this place is there's a lot of communication that happens.
So even if elephants have been spotted about 30, 40, 50 kilometres away it just takes one phone call to inform the necessary concerned people.
This seems a very clever way of doing it.
Which is avoidance, rather than confrontation.
Please, this might be an elephant calling you! - That is one of our guys.
Can I just take this call? - Please do.
Please do.
Thanks.
Sorry, just elephants.
You know, they don't care about time.
They just dial with their beautiful tiny fingers.
Some wild elephants have been detected just a few miles into the hills and I'm invited to tag along.
For the elephants, this is all too noisy for them.
They'd never come into town and be interested in the vegetables or anything like that.
It's never happened during the day.
But they've come very close to the town area at night.
They're elusive, but the elephants leave some big clues for Ganesh and Sreedhar to pick up on.
Oh, you've got your gloves, your forensic gloves.
It's not very old.
About a day and a half.
When you're studying individual animals, do you get to know them? Do you identify one from the other? We do have names for the elephants.
So for some of our regular individuals are named with 'S.
' So we have Sylvia, Sultana, Saviella, Streep and so on.
Streep? After Meryl? - Yes.
- She must be pleased! When you have a 'J' one, will you call it Joanna? Absolutely.
We can have a herd with 'J.
' - I can't tell you how much I would like that.
- Sure.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
They are definitely around here.
We'll have to look for some more signs.
- These are marks made by the tushes.
- The tushes? - Females have shorter - Shorter ones.
- Yeah.
This is getting some smell of elephants.
- Did you get that smell? - I did, I smelled it.
- What is that? - That pungent odour is the elephant smell.
They're somewhere around.
They've broken this whole thing.
It's a fallen tree and they feed on the bark.
They actually Just keep going ahead.
Wild Indian elephants take shelter in the dense jungle during the heat of the day, making them notoriously difficult to see.
Maddeningly, we have to admit defeat.
Well, this has been a thrilling morning because even though we didn't see the beautiful elephant, we've seen so much evidence of it and best of all, I've smelled them and I know that they're just over there.
In a way, it's rather marvellous that nature doesn't just come to your command.
You can't just say, "I'd like to see the elephant.
" You can't do it like that.
But then, on the way back to base .
.
we get a call.
There, there.
There, there.
They're stepping.
A mother and a calf.
This is terribly exciting.
A small group of excited people.
- You see the ear flapping? - Yes! Yes! - There she is.
- How amazing.
It would have been heartbreaking not to have seen something as beautiful as this.
But our luck doesn't stop there.
I think there's Yes! This is extraordinary.
And another one, and another one Just quietly coming in their own sweet order.
Quite a small one skittering about, running around.
A really huge female, isn't she? Oh, look at you, sweetheart.
The work of Ganesh and the team has drastically reduced fatal elephant encounters.
In fact, in the last few years there have been no fatal incidents and man and elephant have co-existed in relative harmony.
Look at that little person hidden amongst the tea.
They're heading down to the swamp and the little baby It The head is hardly above the tea bushes.
So it puts its nose on its mother's flank and off they go.
I'm so, so thrilled.
One of the great dreams of my life to see an Indian elephant in the wild.
Thanks, Ganesh.
Thank you so much.
I'm reluctant to leave the fresh air of the mountains, but one of India's most enthralling cities and some high-tech cosmic creation awaits.
Goddess 600 miles north from Valparai is the city of Hyderabad.
The stunning Islamic architecture instantly makes it feel exotic and I, like a magpie, have been tempted here by all that glitters.
Bangles.
Mounds and mounds and mounds of bangles.
Apart from the fruit and vegetable stalls, the markets are full of jewellery.
Aren't these pretty? This one here is very beautiful.
- Yeah.
- Very beautiful, yeah.
It's so gorgeous to be talking here amongst these gorgeous girls about bling, and this is actually the city of bling.
This is sort of where bling all started.
The nearby Golconda mines were, for 2,000 years, the only source of diamonds in the world and Hyderabad is still a hub for all things sparkly with millions of pounds traded in gems and precious stones.
That seems extraordinary that nobody found diamonds in the world until here.
This was the first and only, first known source for diamonds as currency in the world.
Look, it fits.
How lovely, thank you.
Look at this.
Look at these rubies.
We've got sapphire, citrine -- We have nine gems denoting the nine planets.
Here you can have emerald, Mercury.
The yellow sapphire, Jupiter.
Pearl, moon.
And we have the shukra, the Venus planet surrounding all the gem stones in the form of diamonds.
It's absolutely stunning.
But Hyderabad has something even more glitzy to offer.
A new emerging industry is giving Bollywood a run for its money.
It produces over 150 films a year in the Telegu language.
Welcome to Tollywood! Eclipsing anything in Hollywood, the city now boasts the world's biggest film studio complex and Tollywood's latest high-action blockbuster just smashed Indian box office records, making over a quarter of a billion dollars.
Tollywood is known for being at the cutting edge for digital innovation and one of the companies that's leading the way is Firefly Creative Studio.
Welcome to Firefly.
This is the visual effects studio.
I don't know what I was expecting, but this is extraordinary.
Can you tell me, kind of, what's happening? On a film, what we cannot pull off physically, we sort of fool people by creating them digitally.
- Yes.
- Think of it as an illusion within an illusion.
- Yes.
- That's what we do.
What's going on? Here's a tiger crashing into the ground.
Imagine getting a real tiger to do that.
It would never obey you.
- No.
- So that's a digital tiger.
- A digital tiger? And a real man? - And a real man.
- In a real forest? - In a real forest.
- You can draw anything, can't you? Yeah, pretty much anything.
- So we do the first set of arms.
- Yeah.
- You will take this position.
- Yeah.
These creatives think big and have a leading lady role for me.
So this will be in the left hand.
- Yeah.
- You need to maintain a nice smile.
That is very important.
Yeah.
Very good, very good.
- OK.
- I'm just looking for symmetry.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
I'm getting to love this.
Goddess In some way, I feel I was born for the role.
Thank you.
Thank you and bless you.
I think that's enough of that.
Over 900 miles north-east of Hyderabad lies the legendary city of Calcutta, at the mouth of the Ganges Delta.
For nearly 150 years, it was the capital of British India and I'm pretty sure most of my ancestors will have been here at one time or another.
It was known as the City of Palaces and in the mid-19th century laid claim to being the second city of the Empire after London.
But back in 1698, it was just a string of villages on the Ganges.
Then the East India Company bought some land and started exporting all sorts of commodities.
Trade flourished.
Trade in cotton, in jute, I'm afraid in opium.
And the city grew richer and richer, gained in status, and eventually became the capital of India under British rule.
Since Calcutta's heyday, conflict and politics have conspired to bring harder times upon the city.
Some remnants of colonial architecture remain, but these days the city is famed for its revolutionary spirit and its delicious street food.
And I have a rather dashing companion to show me the sights.
We're going past somewhere.
I'm going to turn my face this way in case I think this is gentlemen's lavatories.
Ifte, you take me to the nicest places.
You spoil me.
This is Ifte.
He's a local guy and he knows everything about everything and he's pretty damn cool.
Ooh, look at this.
What are they cooking here? - He's making what we call dal pakoras.
- Yeah.
- Pakoras are made with lentils.
- Yeah.
Beautiful stuff.
I call these guys micro-entrepreneurs.
- Yeah.
- These are guys on the street who are taking little ingredients and creating magic out of that and selling it to you and making a decent living for himself - and his family.
- This is lovely.
Is this just water that just flows and flows? This is why so many people migrated here.
- Yeah.
- Because this is a city where the river water - and water was flowing freely throughout the city.
- Yeah.
- You don't get that in many cities.
- No, you don't.
Tonnes of water in Calcutta.
So nobody's gonna come and phone the water board and say there's a tap leaking? That's supposed to be like that? It's supposed to be like that.
It's the clean water by the municipality.
So much of Calcutta is left with these old remains - of memories of Britain.
- Right.
How is Britain seen by By Particularly by West Bengal today? Is there any affection left for us? Say something nice! Cos I'm watching.
And remember, I'm a Kashmiri! So say something nice! But what is the feeling? Cos I've got to say, we in Britain, we adore India.
Calcutta, as a city, gained from the British occupation.
So most things that work in Calcutta - were the ones that were set up by the British.
- Yeah.
- Things like what? - Like, say, the sewage system.
Or the pavements.
- Yes.
- Most Indian cities haven't managed to have pavements like this.
People like my grandparents, they look back on the British days, - as the days of order.
- Yeah.
- You know? - There wasn't so much chaos all around.
- No.
People also realise, Joanna, that it was the elite in the British society and the elites in the Indian society who colluded and whatever they did, looted, pillaged, plundered, whatever happened, happened between those guys.
The average British person has almost nothing to do with it - as much as the average Indian person.
- No, that's right.
People realise that.
- This is lovely.
Look at this.
- This is our most popular street food.
You have to try this.
Puffed rice mixed with peanuts, chickpea.
- Yeah.
- It's all roasted, so it's all healthy stuff.
- It's a cupboard.
- Yeah! Look at this.
It's fantastic.
- But there's a way we do it.
- Oh, right.
I did it wrong? I so did that wrong.
I did my niminy-piminy little hands.
Thank you.
Now you're Now you're going native! On the streets of Calcutta, it's impossible not to be moved by seeing what people with very little money have to endure.
For women, it's especially hard living in a country with an appalling record of gender discrimination and violence.
West Bengal has over 30,000 transgenders, most of them in Calcutta, and life for them can be particularly difficult.
Luknat, how old are you? - 26.
- 26.
Shintu? - 24.
- 24.
Rajkumar? - I'm 25.
- And 25.
Luknat, Shintu and Rajkumar are men who want to become women.
If you can, Rajkumar, will you have the full operation? Shintu, were your parents happy, sad, when they knew that you were going to be a girl? This is a difficult world you live in.
It's like a twilight world.
In here you're girls.
You are girls.
In some ways, India is ahead of the West.
In 2014, they legally recognised the third gender.
But not everyone shares this tolerant view.
Many trans people still face violent discrimination and have to resort to begging or sex work to make money.
So you think that if you weren't earning money, they wouldn't be so accepting of you? You will survive.
You will triumph.
Yes! In the meantime, you are all my daughters.
Thank you.
Sweethearts.
Chin, chin, chin, chin.
Cheers.
Calcutta is fascinating.
And tomorrow, another surprise when I step back in time to a lost and magical world.
Oh, my gosh! In the days of the British Empire, great fortunes were made in Calcutta from India's raw materials.
Cotton is the best known, but equally important in its day was jute, a reed grown in rivers here in West Bengal.
50 years ago, before plastic, this sack cloth was used for literally everything.
It's still big business in India and Latta Bajoria, at the age of 67, runs her own jute empire.
So when was this little mill built? I say little, it's colossal.
Two storeys high.
At least 150 years old.
- As old as that? - Yes, yes.
- This is jute? - Yes.
- It looks like my hair.
No, this is a dirty piece of jute.
When you see the real raw jute, that will be like your hair.
Ah! Look at this.
This is what is called the raw jute.
It's fantastic.
It's so soft and lovely.
Oh, look at this.
It's like climbing It's like climbing erm, in a barn.
- You can bounce also.
- It's soft.
Children's playground.
Yes.
It is called the golden fibre.
We make it into sacks, or the fabric also.
- So you make all that here? - We make everything.
- Everything we make here.
- It can't be used as fodder, can it? - No, I don't think so.
- Nothing eats it.
I'd eat it.
I think it looks lovely.
No, I don't think it's edible.
Latta knew nothing about the jute industry and when her husband died, she was expected to sell up.
But she defied the naysayers and took on this and two even bigger mills.
Oh, my gosh! She's allowing me onto the factory floor to see how raw jute is combed, twisted, and woven into a coarse sack cloth.
I feel as though I've stepped back 150 years being here.
It's quite overwhelming.
These beautiful old machines, all very specific to what their job is.
All the particles of jute in the air.
Terribly bad for the lungs.
But look at these.
Aren't they just fabulous? The Scottish city of Dundee was Britain's jute capital where, in the 19th century, there were around 100 factories just like this.
Everything from coal to potatoes was stored and transported in sacks made of jute.
At the height of the Empire, production shifted to India.
Later, in the post-war period, with the rise of plastics and cheaper alternatives, jute fell out of fashion.
Oh, look.
"Mackie & Sons Limited.
Belfast.
" James Mackie.
I think his descendants will be pleased to see that his machines are still working.
In these days of sustainability, with many countries making moves to get rid of plastic, I think it's time this amazing, multi-purpose, natural fibre had a renaissance.
And this is where all the sacks are.
- Yes.
- To think that this fine thing, this fine stamped product, firm, it's actually become a cloth, came from this little plant.
This beautiful little blonde plant.
This is jute.
Latta, we have to bring back jute.
Jute is in its ascendancy again.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I cannot thank you enough for letting me see round your extraordinary jute mill.
- I will never forget it.
- I'm happy to be called the Jute Baroness.
You are the Jute Baroness.
400 miles north of Calcutta lies the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim.
Sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan on the Chinese border, it's India's least-populated and second-smallest state.
It means a lot to me because it's where my grandfather was stationed for many years and where my mother grew up.
Jason, look at that bridge! Some quite scary bits of the road where there are Somebody's gone over.
We won't go over, will we? (No.
) Welcome to Kalimpong.
I'm so thrilled to be here, you know, Jason, because all these names are so familiar from my Particularly my mother's childhood.
They must have made these journeys and the roads weren't as good as this, were they? Long, long journeys.
For over 300 years, Sikkim was an independent country with its own royal family, before becoming part of India in 1975.
As a foreigner, I still have to show my passport to enter.
You can't just come into this place because it's It's actually a completely different state.
And because it's strategically so important with China, with erm, Bhutan, with Nepal, it's right up like that.
So got to go in here and Little, sort of, good luck jockey monkey, ready to carry anything I need.
Quite nice.
All of Sikkim is mountainous, and on the border with Nepal, it rises to the magnificent peak of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
On a clear day you can see its spectacular five peaks from the capital, Gangtok, so I have my fingers firmly crossed for fine weather.
Of course, it's not absolutely necessary to take this ropeway, or sort of cable car, across Gangtok to see it, but I think it would just be a thrilling way to, sort of, to get the lie of the land and these great valleys.
It looks as though it's completely packed and I'm being filmed.
Ticket, ticket, ticket.
It's bit misty, but I think we'll be able to see something.
It's an extraordinary town.
It's absolutely built on the sides of the Of the hill.
Sweet Himalayan air.
You can hear shots in the distance.
Of course, this part of Sikkim is so .
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erm, sensitive.
A huge army presence.
And you can be sure that's not shooting wild animals cos they're not allowed to do that in India.
Army practice.
As an army brat, I should know that.
Gosh, this is a mass of Buddhist prayer flags.
They believe that all the prayers which are written on the flags, as the wind blows, the prayers and blessings are released into the world which is why they're quite often put where the mountain air can take them.
When the cloud lifts, and it will, I'll be staring at the five peaks of Kangchenjunga and they're terribly important to the people of Sikkim because when Armageddon comes, when the end of the world comes, everything that you need is going to be stored in these five peaks.
Each one has a different precious substance.
Salt.
Turquoise, gold and precious metals.
Sacred scriptures.
Arms and ammunition.
Grain and, strangely enough, medicine which are grouped together.
So you go to one of those five mountains and you'll get those things and live forever, particularly if you're Sikkimese.
Well, beautiful mountain, I've paid you the greatest respect by not even looking at you.
I'm so disappointed! I so wanted to see Kangchenjunga.
You know, you've got to embrace it, put on a cheesy grin and go, "Hey, that's life.
" But sometime I'll come and see you.
But the real revelation is when I meet Sikkim royalty and delve into the past.
- Is it from Grandpa? - Mm-hm.
This letter here.
Gosh, this is one of my grandfather's letters.
So here I am in Sikkim, in Gangtok, which is the capital of Sikkim.
I'm terribly excited to be here because there was a place called the Residency which is a rather grand name for actually, now what is called the Governor's Lodge or something.
It's where Well, the resident, the political officer lived, at the time that my mother was a child and I've found some pictures here of her at the Residency.
With Granny, fooling around in fancy dress.
Here's a garden and her with her little pony.
You can seen in the background behind the fence the land seems just to fall away.
So here you can see it's pretty much at the edge of a precipice.
You can see the hills coming down here and I think probably the hills going down there.
I wonder if I'll get to see it? I'd so love to see where she spent her childhood years riding in the hills and mucking about with dogs and learning about plants and things.
But before I can go searching for the Residency I've been invited somewhere very special.
For over 300 years, this Himalayan kingdom was ruled by a Buddhist monarchy.
When Sikkim became part of India in 1975, this dynasty was abolished.
Pema and Dechen are two young members of the deposed royal family.
They've offered to show me round this exquisite temple.
- So lovely to have you.
- It's lovely to be in Sikkim.
This is the Sikkim Tsuklakhan.
It was originally where all ceremonies and important prayer rituals would take place for the royal family or for the benefit of Sikkim.
It's stunning, isn't it? Just got little monks upstairs.
We have about 132 monks here erm, who are eventually going to be responsible for carrying on our unique Buddhist traditions - for the next generation.
- Otherwise it would die out, wouldn't it? This building is simply beautiful.
Can you describe this, what looks like a furious god, but with all kinds of Tell me what some of these images are.
Outside of monasteries, typically one has the guardian protectors - of the four directions.
- They have that in Hindu temples as well and they always have moustaches.
- The guardians, is that right? - This one also has a moustache.
These two have got moustaches.
Absolutely stunning.
Typically when we go in, we do prostration.
Show me how this is.
- One.
Two.
- One here near the chest.
And then down.
And you touch your forehead.
What a fantastic, fantastic figure that is.
In the middle erm, is Guru Rinpoche.
He's the patron saint of Sikkim.
Who is responsible for bringing Buddhism to Tibet in the 800s.
So this must be an extremely important place.
It is considered one of the most sacred places in Tibetan Buddhism.
Wow.
Guru Rinpoche also made a prophecy that many years later four lamas, or holy men, one from each point of the compass, would meet in Sikkim and crown the one from the East as the divine ruler.
Has His Holiness been here? His Holiness, the Dalai Lama has been here a few times.
- Has he? - Yes.
- In fact, the ties with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and er, the royal family here, they go back long back, so he always makes it a point to try and stop here in Sikkim and meet the Chogyal at the palace.
How wonderful.
What is the position now of the Chogyal, the royal family, within India? Is he still seen as kind of a king and ruler? Or is it more titular? Is it more It's very titular and only really in the eyes of legitimacy and the Sikkimese.
Does that ever cause problems? No, look.
Say nothing more.
Just down the road from this glorious temple is the Residency, where my mother grew up.
But unfortunately, getting to what is now a government building is proving tricky.
What used to be called the Residency in my grandfather's day and is now called the Raj Bhavan, the governor's palace, I think .
.
has denied us access.
I can't believe it.
I had longed to see this more than anything.
It's just quite a simple house.
I've got the photographs of it Why does it break my heart? Because I've got the pictures, it's only a garden.
I'm not asking to do anything diplomatic.
I'm just saying, "Can I see the garden where my mother grew up?" And the answer, I think, is pretty much no.
So there we are.
No matter.
Pema and Dechen have an intriguing new project to show me.
After uncovering a treasure trove of long-lost files and letters in a New York attic, the girls have set about archiving and digitising a royal history of Sikkim.
So our first project is the digitisation of the Sikkim palace archives which is a collection of 100,000 documents from 1875 to 1975.
So just tell me, it all looks like modern computers.
- Where are these old, old papers? - I'll let Dechen explain! If you'd like to follow me.
So this is where all the files are prepared before they're digitised.
I have an example here.
- Actually, if you'd like to maybe - I will.
Gloves.
- Thank you.
- Then you can examine them closer.
- Look at that.
- This is from one of the political officers at the time, Charles Bell.
- Charles Bell? I met his daughter.
- Did you? - Yeah.
So this is May 1910.
- He was one of the predecessors of my grandfather.
- Yes.
We actually have some documents and files in which your grandfather is mentioned.
Colonel Weir? Oh, my gosh.
"My dear Maharaja.
" Who's this from, do you think? Would you like to take a guess? It isn't? Is it from Grandpa? - Mm-hm.
This letter, yes.
- Oh, my gosh.
This is one of my grandfather's letters.
"Political officer, Sikkim, 1930.
" Oh, my gosh.
Look at this, isn't it fantastic? Referring to There's a dispute going on.
The dispute between Sikkim and Tibet boundaries.
It's the devdra state.
So my grandfather's suggesting there's a meeting to talk about it.
He's being a diplomat, which is what his job was.
And here's a letter from His Highness.
Look at that ravishing paper.
"My dear Colonel Weir.
Thank you very much for your kind letter.
I quite agree with you that ill feelings in the Raj family has undesirable effects.
I'll try my best to fully discuss the matter in any personal meeting which you may consider desirable.
Kindest regards, best wishes to both of you.
Yours sincerely " Very, crossed out.
Not "Very sincerely," just "sincerely.
" Little bit cooling off there.
"Cross that out, it's too much.
" - And which signature is this? - This is Tashi Mangyal, - another Chogyal.
- How fascinating.
We have a letter from our great-grandfather to your grandfather.
- So we're linked forever? - We're linked, yes.
I tell you, emails are not as good.
No.
How extraordinary.
I could have spent days poring over those letters, but there was more excitement to come.
I cannot tell you what's just happened.
I was saying to Pema and Dechen how sad I was that I couldn't get to see the old Residency, my mother's old home.
So Dechen pulled a few strings and Tsegyal, her father, is taking me round! I'm afraid I can't take the riff-raff, the crew with me, I'm gonna go on my own and I must go now otherwise the gates will be slammed again.
This is fabulous news! It was so kind of Dechen's father to take me round there.
It's still the same.
It's got additions to it and it's been much spruced up.
It's got now tarmac and it's been painted out of existence.
The bit at the edge where I see my mother, sitting on her pony as a child, and what looked like a sheer drop behind her, the sheer drop is now filled with new buildings and the big, new, very, very grand governor's palace and so on.
I only ever saw it in black-and-white photographs.
Now today, I got a chance to see what it was like and smell the air and to see the trees and see what it would have been like to be here.
And I swear, I saw dancing amongst the flowerbeds, the little spirit of my eight-year-old mother with her dogs and her pony.
Fabulous.
Next time, the surprising mega city Mumbai This feels like California coming down here.
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the devastating plight of the Untouchables Thank you, my dear.
Bless you.
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and onto the desert state of Rajasthan Hello, girls.
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and Maharajan opulence.
I've never seen anything like it.