The year was 1616. The Dutch and the English were bringing home shiploads of goods from the mystical lands of the east. News of India’s riches had spread like wildfire in Europe and everyone wanted to get on the next ship to this golden land. So, by order of the King of Denmark and Norway, admiral Ove Gjedde did just that. The journey however, turned

The French have been credited with inventing the most marvellous things including Asprin and Hot Air Balloons. But when it comes to French Toast the credit appears to lie somewhere else entirely. Where exactly? Your guess is as good as mine. Or it could be Ancient Rome, anywhere between the 1st and the 8th centuries. Somewhere within these 800 years, a compilation of Roman recipes

he Marakkars were a community of Muslims that mostly lived in the kingdom of Cochin. They dominated the trade between the Coromandel and Malabar coasts (what would now be the coasts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala). They owned ships and traded in spices and other goods, mostly destined for Europe.

Just think: in the one second you took to read the title of this post; 25000 cups of tea had been drunk all over the world. Tea is the most popular beverage in the world - second only to bottled water. The Chinese invented tea-brewing probably before the 2nd century BC. They were, (and are) the largest tea producers of the world. For thousands of years, they enjoyed quiet cups of tea till about the 17th century, when suddenly, the whole world went gaga about the brewed liquid. What caused this large-scale globalization?