Great Old TV Episodes...from Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

I was dismayed three years ago when I found out that internationally renowned chef Anthony Bourdain had committed suicide in France while filming a new episode for his acclaimed CNN series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.  The episode I'm discussing today, PUNJAB, is from the series' third season, originally aired in April, 2014. Bourdain examined the northwest Indian state's cuisine...which he said is what most the West think of when considering "Indian food"...by eating from street-side stands (Bourdain loved these wherever in the world he traveled) as well as restaurant food and "high dining".  He went into geography, politics, history and religion: the area is predominantly of the Sikh faith and borders on Pakistan, which was artificially divided from India in 1947 to reduce mass casualties...which happened anyway when mass migrations of Muslims and Hindus across the new border drawn by a British official produced essentially the civil war that they wanted to avert when Britain granted independence. The border between the two fiercely belligerent neighbors is tight and strict...yet farm-owners on the Indian side are allowed to work their fields on the Pakistani side! After showing the Punjab's capital city of Amritsar, he took a train eastward (and upward) to the base of the Himalayas, ending in the old British colonial outpost of Shimla, where the buildings look more as if they belonged in England than India.  Bourdain also showed that dancing is a very big deal in India...there was plenty of that, too, in this episode. And other than the dinner he ate at Shimla when he tried their mutton and a chicken meal at an Amritsar restaurant, all the food in this episode was vegetarian...Bourdain, more a meat-eater, nevertheless stated that were Western vegetarian menus like that he which experienced in Punjab, he would be much more conducive to it.  Every single episode of this Parts Unknown series was interesting to me, although at times I felt Bourdain got a little too political with his emphasis (as, for example, in the Russia episode).  Still, it was a personal journey, and to each his own, I say.  I'm still sad over Bourdain's death, which apparently was due to long-standing recurring bouts of severe depression...