Kamla Devi has made the same lingad fern pickle every spring for fifty years. When her granddaughter Pooja started selling a few jars to trekkers in 2019, neither of them imagined that the recipes would one day employ forty women.
Their enterprise now makes eighteen pickles and chutneys from hill produce, all sun-cured and sold online. Every recipe is credited to the woman who brought it.
The best part, Pooja says, is that young women no longer have to choose between earning a living and staying home. Several have turned down offers to move to the plains.
