Yerba mate is made from the leaves of Ilex paraguariensis, a South American shrub, brewed in hot water and sipped through a metal straw from a gourd. The Guarani peoples of pre-Columbian Paraguay drank it first, and Spanish colonists took it up in the 1500s. In the 1600s Jesuit missions in Paraguay domesticated the plant, which had previously been gathered from wild stands, and their mate was so plentiful it was used as currency. Today Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay form its heartland, and Syrian immigrants carried it back to Lebanon and Syria, where it is popular among the Druze.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.