It is a maze of ornamental hedges and sweet-smelling orange trees, where leaf-carpeted paths meander through the pines.

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Or so it seemed until the 1950s, when collector Forest Sweet, who had accumulated six stray leaves (a leaf being a single two-sided page), deduced they came from Washington's original.

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The most popular gift is mithai (Indian sweets), and shops are filled with a spectacular array specially prepared for this festival, from thickly cut squares of barfi (a fudge-like sweet, often coated with a thin film of edible silver leaf) , to soft syrupy gulab jamuns (deep-fried balls of dough) and spongy rasgullas (sweetened cream cheese balls flavoured with rose water).

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KaoSarn, a family-run Thai restaurant, is consistently packed with diners who come hungry for its sweet red prawn curry and spiced roast chicken served with sticky rice steamed in a banana leaf.

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