It has been too long since my last post! At this rate, we will never finish this trip,
but I vow to move things along.
One of our last field trips in Orcha was a government-run
recycled paper-making facility turning discarded garments into beautiful
hand-pressed paper. It’s a labour
intensive process manually chopping up the bits of fabric, cleaning it, turning
it to pulp, pressing and drying it. The plant makes all the university diplomas
for the area. The plant employs mostly
women.
Women pressing garment pulp into paper. They wear
improvised plastic skirts to protect their beautiful saris.
Example of the finished product: university
diploma on wonderfully thick paper
Our last night in Orcha the group took a cooking class with a woman in her family home. It was actually more like we looked on while she prepared delicious dishes and let us feast on everything! She gave us hints on making summer and winter (spicier) Chai tea and prepared Aloo patak (potatoes and spinach), Aubergine curry (store the cut pieces in water to prevent them from turning brown), Aloo Gobhi (potatoes and caulimflower) and chapati, all on a simple two-burner stove.
A rare group photo. Everywhere we went we
received marigold leis. Sad the number
of flowers that had to die for us to tour India! One member joked that our tour group name should be
the “Marigold Massacre”.
That night it we hopped on a sleeper train to Allahabad. I slept reasonably well all things
considered, but the bathrooms lived up to their dismal reputation.
Amy putting on a brave face after using the facilities,
sitting next to our tour guide who boasts a resplendent Gujurati mustache.
From Allahabad we did a whirlwind tour of Nehru’s
house, India’s first prime minister and father of Indira Gandhi, India’s first
female prime minister. The grounds were
swarming with smartly dressed students.
Miscellaneous!
Interesting marketing in Orcha:
Travelling discretely in India….in a bus with “Tourist”
stamped on it in 500 pt font:
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