Rafi Meander

The best thing I found in three days here wasn't on any list. In a small eatery off the main road, a woman lifted the lid off an earthen pot and steam curled out smelling of turmeric and wood-smoke.

Jadoh — red hill rice cooked with pork, bay leaves and black pepper, slow over firewood until the grains take the colour of monsoon earth. The everyday dish of Jaintia country, which tastes like you should have been eating it all your life.

The Jaintia don't write cookbooks. Recipes pass through hands — mothers to daughters, the way the firewood is arranged dictating the heat as much as any measure. Jadoh is the centre of a cuisine that prizes fat and acid equally: the sourness of fermented soybean (tungtap), the crunch of pork skin, the clean heat of local ginger. A food culture built from what these misty hills provide, with no need for the plains.

A grassroots organisation working across West Jaintia Hills since 2006 — running Childline (1098) in Jowai, supporting sustainable farming, and building homes for families in need. The sort of operation that doesn't advertise because everyone already knows where they are.