Travelling Around Britain and the World

Monday 11 March 2019

To the Great Rann of Kutch, Craft Villages and a Salt Desert: Gujarat Part 13

Gujarat
India

This post covers day 13 of a 14-day journey around Gujarat, following our circuit of Rajasthan last year. Smaller than Rajasthan, Gujarat is about the size of the Island of Great Britain and has much the same population.

5,000 years ago, Gujarat was a centre of the Indus Valley Civilization and subsequently played its part in most of the major north Indian empires. When Islamic invaders reached northern India in the 9th century Gujarat held out until 1300 when it became part of the Delhi Sultanate.

From Kutch north to Hodka and Around
An independent Muslim sultan seized power in 1391and Gujarat maintained its independence until becoming part of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century and later the British Empire, though local rulers of a patchwork of Princely States had considerable autonomy. At independence in 1947 Gujarat was part of the State of Bombay, becoming a state in its own right in 1960.

With a long coast line facing the Arabian sea, Gujaratis have been sea farers and international traders for millennia.

Gujarat is the home state of both Mahatma Gandhi and the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

-o0o00o0o-

North of Bhuj the countryside is poor, agriculture is difficult, the ‘wet’ season of July and August is not particularly reliable and the fields are salty. Such country has never sustained a large population and villages are few and far between.

Sumrasar, Village of Craftspeople

One way to make a living is to concentrate on handicrafts; more and more people are being trained in traditional skills by government programmes. Another, linked to it, is tourism but that is in its infancy.

We paused our journey at Sumrasar some 25km from Bhuj.

Sumrasar, Gujarat

Some houses are large, though not palatial – note the hand pump just inside the front gate…

Village house, Sumrasar

…but there are signs of increased affluence and the reason can often be seen hanging up to dry.

Increasing affluence, Sumrasar (and the handicrafts that have caused it)

Finding an open gate and three women working inside Vijay turned on his charm and we were invited in to take a closer look at their embroidery. One was embroidering a sari using the most delicate of stitching. Working eight hours a day, she told us, it would take her 18 months. Two others were working on smaller pieces that would only take four months. I suspect we would be shocked if we knew how little they are paid for such highly skilled work.

We then dropped in on Meghiben. We did not know as she showed us her appliqué work (her eyes are no longer good enough for fine embroidery) that she is something of a local star and the subject of YouTube videos. Some of her work is complex, but her simpler snakes and ladders cloths would make appropriate presents, so we bought a couple. We grossly overpaid, but her chuckle, beaming smile and evident happiness were worth every rupee.

Meghiben and her Snakes and Ladders, Sumrasar

In a farm on the edge of the village....

Farm on the edge of Sumrasar

.... a young woman alone in the house was hesitant to receive visitors but was happy to show us the embroidery she was working on as part of her daughter’s dowry.

Embroidery for a daughter's dowry, Sumrasar

We continued our wander round the village. Poor quality farmland as this is, most of the men were still working the fields; handicrafts were largely, but not exclusively, the domain of women.

Spinning, Sumrasar

Rogan Art in Nirona

To visit Sumrasar we had driven 2km east from the main highway. 15 km west of the highway through dry farmland...

Dry farmlands between Sumrasar and Nirona

…. – though goats will survive on anything –

Goats will thrive anywhere. Between Sumrasar and Nirona

…is the village of Nirona. Rogan art, an art/craft undergoing a revival after almost dying out at the late 20th century, survives in this one village. The locals are proud of their work and very keen that visitors should be aware that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi (a native of Gujarat) visited Barack Obama in 2014 he presented him with Rogan art.

Important information at the entrance to Nirona

Abdul Gafur Khatri is the patriarch of the family who kept rogan art alive - the extensive Khatri family website can be seen here. In Sumrasa we largely met craftswomen, but rogan art has traditionally been ‘man’s work’. All the men of the Khatri family are now involved but in 2010, as the firm expanded they started training women, too – not before time, some might say.

The rogan technique was brought from Persia in the dim, distant past; ‘rogan’ being derived from the Farsi word for oil (like the more familiar rogan josh, lamb cooked in ghee). The paint for rogan art is produced by adding vegetable dye and a binder to castor oil that has been boiled for three days. The result is a liquid paint of high viscosity. The painter pins a cloth to his trousers, works a lump of paint onto the end of a stylus…

Getting the paint onto the stylus, rogan art, Nirona

…and guides it as it falls in a thread onto the cloth.

Rogan art, Nirona
Sometimes the paint can be curved elegently from a height, sometimes details need attention

Designs are symmetrical; once a colour has been laid on one half of the cloth, it is folded and pressed reproducing the design on the other.

Traditionally the painted fabric was purchased by lower caste women to decorate clothing and bed coverings for their weddings. Painting was undertaken in the months prior to the wedding season, the painters reverting to other work, mainly agriculture, for the rest of the year. The arrival of industrially printed artificial cloths all but destroyed the rogan market. With the aid of government programmes to boost tourism, the Kahtri family have re-invented the art, making wall hangings, bags, cushion covers, table cloths and pillow covers to give it a wider appeal, particularly to tourists. Foreign tourists remain rare in Gujarat, but domestic tourism appears stronger.

‘Tree of Life’ motifs have always dominated, but recently there has been much diversification and even some non-symmetrical designs. Narendra Modi gave Barack Obama a Tree of Life and we liked the traditional design too and bought one for ourselves. Despite being a much poorer man than Barack Obama, I had to pay for my own, and although it is very pleasing, it is probably not the same quality. Ours is on show in the hall, I wonder where he keeps his (and are US presidents permitted to keep their gifts? Probably not.)

Tree of Life, Rogan art from Nirona

Other Crafts in Nirona

Rogan art is not Nirona’s only craft. A few doors down we watched a large man make a small bell using only cutters, pliers for bending, a variety of hammers and shapes to hammer over. Edges were joined by cutting and sliding them together. Produced in minutes, the bell looked the part even if it was not very musical, but as it was destined for sheep or goats – he can do bigger ones for cows - that mattered little.

Making a bell, Nirona

Despite the success of the Khatri family, Nirona does not look affluent…

Nirona
….and not all businesses succeed.

I doubt we will have lunch from Bhatia foods, Nirona

I doubt the young man making spoons, spatulas and rolling pins out in the street using a hand powered lathe was making his fortune. We bought a spoon to encourage him.

Making a rolling pin, Nirona

To Hodka and the Mahefeel E Rann Resort

Returning to the highway we resumed our northward journey. We had now travelled so far north we left tropical India behind.

Crossing the Tropic of Cancer

Passing a line though does not make it any cooler, even if the fields were apparently covered with frost. Ever present as a subtext in Kutch, salt was inexorably becoming the main feature.

Salty fields, Great Rann of Kutch

After 30km we turned off towards Hodka. There is more to the village than we realised at the time, but it is tucked away from the half-dozen or more ‘resorts’ providing tourist accommodation. Over the years I have lost track of the meaning of ‘resort’; once upon a time it simply meant the seaside town where you spent your holidays. Then came the ‘Hotel California’ usage - a hotel with so many facilities you never need to leave (though you can check-out). This was followed by the ‘all-in resort’ – a closed world where unlimited food and drink are provided ‘free’ so you can visit different countries without the inconvenience of encountering untamed foreigners. And, now we arrived at the Mehfil-e-Rann Resort, seven huts in a desert enclosure.

Mehfil-e-Rann Resort, Hodka

To be fair, they were platial, as huts go, both outside and in.

Inside our hut, Mahefeel E Rann Resort

They gave us a well cooked, well spiced vegetarian lunch in the small not quite open-air restaurant – it had a roof, but only three walls. .

The White Desert of Kutch

At over 10,000Km² the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the world’s largest salt flat. At 7,500Km² The Great Rann of Kutch claims to be the world’s largest salt desert, though I would have thought a salt flat was the epitome of a salt desert. Not all the Great Rann is salt flat, but there is enough is to make the world’s second largest continuous area of salt – I think. The vast Makgadikgadi Salt Pan in Botswana consists or several discrete areas of salt in a sandy desert, the largest single area being just under 5,000Km², so maybe…

The salt starts a few kilometres north of Hodka; a viewing platform (there is nothing to see but salt) and a cluster of camel and horse carts marking the end of the road.

Viewing platform and carts, Great Rann of Kutch

This is a place where Indian tourists come, today we were the only foreigners.

An Indian family set off on a camel trek, Great Rann of Kutch

We walked out onto the salt and looked at it stretching to the horizon. Vijay asked if we wanted to hire a cart. Why say no?

One reason is I have a horse allergy, but I sat facing backwards as far from the horse as I could…

Lynne and Vijay were looking forward, I was looking
back at where we had been

...while Lynne took pictures of people coming the other way.

Wherever you go somebody will be staring at their phone, Great Rann of Kutch

The horse plodded on for a couple of unchanging kilometres, then came to a halt and we got out.

In the Great Rann of Kutch

Lynne walked a little way into the lonely expanse. The whiteness plays with your mind, it looks like it ought to be cold and Lynne’s feet should be freezing in her sandals, but they weren’t. It looks like it ought to be slippery, but walking requires no particular care. The well-trodden (or hooved) sections look grimy and slushy, but whatever our heads were telling us, this was not snow.

Lynne without frozen toes in the Great Rann of Kutch

It is hard to imagine this landscape a) not being cold and b) not being permanent. If the July/August rains are plentiful then the desert becomes a vast salt lake - or maybe an inlet of the sea. This 50 second YouTube video shot from below the viewing platform in August 2017 makes the point admirably.

All the carts stopped around the same area – there should have been snowball fights, but salt does not make people behave that way.

The stopping point, with the viewing platform in the background, Great Rann of Kutch

They stop here because they can go no further, a drain cut through the salt bars their way. Salt does not melt, nor will it dissolve in an already saturated solution so the drain is a permanent feature. Aerial photographs shows them criss-crossing the plain, but where the water comes from is unclear. According to the map the sizeable Rann of Kutch Lake is some 20Km away in the right direction, but it is dry this time of year.

Drain in the Great Rann of Kutch

On the way back we chatted, through Vijay, with our youthful driver. He does not own the horse and cart, he said, but .borrows it from a friend in the village'; I presume he rents the cart and keeps his takings. When his working day is over he gets to ride the horse home.

Dinner at Hodka

Lunch at the Mehfil-e-Rann Resort (no, I don’t understand the name either) had been good and so was dinner (and lunch and dinner the next day). A series of small vegetarian dishes, a lot like a thali, were dished up by the lads behind the counter.

The dining room, Mahefeel E Rann Resort, Hodka

The resort was not busy, but there was usually at least one other table occupied, on one occasion five or six.

I was not always sure what I was eating, India has a wealth of unfamiliar vegetables and the condiments offered new experiences, but this was good, typical Kutch cooking. We found a lot to enjoy.

Lynne and Vijay have dinner, Mahefeel E Rann Resort, Hodka

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Location: Hodka, Gujarat 370510, India

2 comments:

  1. Vijay2 July 2020 at 16:30

    Hi David
    Thank you for yet another interesting blog. Mehfil - e - Rann is an Urdu word which means party in the desert in simple words.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dandly2 July 2020 at 16:33

      Thank you, Vijay. My itinerary had it written with a capital E in the middle and no dash, making it look like someone's name. Now I am enlightened.

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