Karnataka

I’ve always had mixed feelings about visiting Goa. If I have a precious few weeks in India, why would I go to Goa? And if I wanted a beach holiday why would I go to India?

In the end we only spent 3 nights there, cutting out the colonial centre and spending the time on one of the quieter beaches in the south of the state: Agonda.

But I have to admit the beach was lovely. 2 miles of sand, not too crowded, not too hot and cleaned daily. The sea was warm and nicely choppy.

Agonda Cottages was a relaxed place to stay and there was a fair choice of eating and drinking shacks down the beach. Nothing wildly exciting or especially Goan though. The monsoon means that the beach is large disassembled over the summer and rebuilt annually.

At the southern end of the beach were a collection of overland vehicles, mainly from Germany and Holland, that had made the journey by road from Europe. The transit across Pakistan is currently quite dangerous. One of the Germans was recounting his trip on his blog – I’ve lost the link – difficult even with a police escort.

The days in Jaipur were a last minute change to accommodate Kim’s course on mud resist block printing at the Diggi Palace Hotel. We flew there a couple of days before the course started to check out a couple of places we wanted to visit.

Firstly was a trip to the massive Amber Fort that sits in the hills to the north of Jaipur. We’ve been to the fort before but hadn’t got to the Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing that sits in a restored haveli in a village just behind the fort. There’s a collection of old and modern textiles demonstrating a range of printing and dyeing techniques. A couple of men demonstrated block carving and printing and let you have a go.

The next pictures show the complexity of a multi-stage dyeing and resist process.

And a few pictures of the fort; magnificent and crowded.

Before the trip Kim contacted one of the remaining producers of leheriya and mothra tie dyes. This is a technique where fabric is rolled from one corner to the other diagonally and then it is tied at intervals with strings producing fine stripy waves of colour on silk.

Armed with a vague address and a GPS we persuaded a tuk-tuk to drive us away from the sights to a busy township. There, enquiring door to door and followed by large crowds of kids we found a house and were invited in. But there was very limited English and no chance of a factory visit so we we sat down with their silk samples and secret dye stuffs.

Back in central Jaipur we explored the crumbling buildings, street food and stone masons.