Lahara alternatives

Hi everyone,

For the tabla players and kathak dancers out there, we all know how hard it is to find good lahara accompaniment outside of India. Many of us practice with Nagma machines, or computers playing back MIDI files that loop melodies for us to practice with. Ideally, we'd all have sarangi players for hire, but we don't. As an alternative to the above methods, I recently came across these links on chandrakantha.com's Indian music forums:

Sarangi lahara: http://www.kritiarts.com/lehra.htm (available for purchase at 5$ per lahara)
Harmonium lahara: http://www.riyazmala.com/htm/lehera_sathi.htm (300 Rs per CD)

Both sites have free samples available for download.

And of course, there's always the free TaalPulse software - http://taalpulse.sourceforge.net/

Happy holidays!