The adventures of Courtney, Cliff, Cathy and Ferris as we travel to Delhi, Bhubaneshwar, Puri, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Pushkar, Nimaj, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Ellora, Ajanta and Goa!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Ikat Dhonga Ikat Dhonga / 21 Oct 09






Woke up to find that the electronics jinx cloud that I’ve been operating under had spread to my wonderful Indian cell phone. When I met C&C for breakfast Cliff had reception but I did not, and we have identical phones and were sitting next to each other. Cliff is pretty handy with gadgets but couldn’t fix it. For some reason he had the idea to ask one of the people in the restaurant if they could take a look at it since everyone in India has a cell phone and ours is pretty simple. A beautiful hostess was standing nearby and she a tried a few things that didn’t work. The two of them had their heads together when I left the table to get last minute items ready for the day. When we met in the hotel lobby, low and behold the hostess had fixed it, saving me/us a lengthy stop at an Indian store. I would have never thought to ask a hotel employee. What’s really wonderful about the phone is how inexpensive it is. I spoke to Eze and Scott last night for a total of 30 minutes at a cost of only $.06/minute. The US cell phone rate would be $2.99/minute. Now with our technical problems resolved we could proceed.

In the morning we visited a very interesting ikat village called Naupatana. It was only 80 km from Bhubaneswar but it took us two hours to get there. Roads in this part of India are horrible anyway, never mind going to a remote village. Although roads are paved they’re filled with enormous pot holes. Along the way we passed ox-carts, water buffalo (Scott, you would have loved the huge herd we saw wallowing in water), people herding cows and bulls, bicycles carrying six foot bundles of sticks, adorable school children in their matching uniforms and backpacks…

The ikat village was L-shaped with houses lining the street on either side. Each small house seemed to have an identical layout, long and narrow with the first room containing a loom, the room behind that a ladder to the roof, behind that a “kitchen” and that was as far as I could see. We saw women working at looms and young men sitting outside tying off ikat designs.

My favorite experience had nothing to do with weaving. We encountered a group of women with small bowls of food in their hands and they were making a “tak tak tak tak” sound. Our guide explained that they were performing a ceremony to ward off being bitten by the King Cobra. The sound was an imitation of the sound it makes. Fantastic!

Lunch on the bus. We’d been told to bring something with us and after all the food we’ve eaten we were perfectly happy to much on just nuts and bananas. After lunch we visited a bronze dhonga making village, Sadeibareni, which was much more primitive than the first and that’s saying something. Apparently this village has always made bronze but the government is trying to help the villagers by promoting sales and has put in a paved walkway for tourists to make their hovels more accessible. Children were caked with dirt but ran along accompanying us in a friendly and playful way.

Women in both villages were saris with nothing underneath but discreetly keep themselves covered. Men wear dhoti which is a long cloth wound around the hips and tucked between the legs.

Then a long, 110 km drive back to Bhubaneswar…we arrived at the hotel hot, sweaty, dusty and exhausted. I excused myself for the evening but somehow C&C had the energy for an Orissan dinner and musical performance.