Dede Sophie

Imagine this. A high altitude village in the Western Himalayas of India that is made up of a small group of people living in Tibetan styled mud and stone houses and who are surrounded by snow capped mountains and the rolling hills of the mighty Himalayas. Now, imagine their mountainous land being the home to a rich array of fossils of marine animals and plants from millions of years ago. Sounds impossible right? Well, such a village exists at an altitude of 4400 metres above MSL in the high Himalayas of Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh. This village called Langza is a picturesque village that lies at the base of the Chau Chau Kang Nilda peak and that is just made up of a few hundred people. The interesting thing is that Langza and most of Spiti valley was under the ancient Tethys sea many millions of years ago and it was home to many ancient marine flora and fauna. The entire mountain landscape that we see today was all under a huge ocean before the tectonic plates shifted leading to t

Before we even get into the £154,650 Aston Martin Vantage F1 Coupe or F1 Roadster if you prefer, writes Mark Gallivan, with its 535PS cannonade of V8 power (up 25PS from the base Vantage) we need to talk about that man in the silver Peugeot 3008 crossover. There he is to my right stationary at the set of traffic lights with his entire family in tow. Looking straight ahead I get this odd feeling he’s staring across at me. So I look over. His wife, next to him, is scrolling through her phone. Oh no, not for her a tasty green Aston Martin Vantage F1 with an over the top rear wing that Airbus would give low whistles to. No, Mrs B&Q is studiously ignoring the grumbling car next to her.  The man, meanwhile, stares the sad stare of person who has just seen his life – the one he sellotaped to his bedroom wall of super performance cars when he was 11 – slowly slide away. Ashen faced he gives me a half nod of a condemned man from his Peugeot. The I-might-as-well-kiss-all-my-dreams-goodbye-on