DIY: Rajasthan Block Printing

We have FINALLY made it to travel week!!! Our first stop? Jaipur-"The Pink City". After seeing the Amber Fort we were fortunate enough to see first-hand how Rajasthan makes its famous block printing, a style of hand-stamping on fabric using natural dye! Below are photos from our hands-on tutorial!

To Begin: Fabric, Series of Stamps, and Natural Dyes

 Phase 1: Base Layer of Stamping. Dip stamp in dye, place on fabric, and pound!

Phase 2 and Phase 3: Same as Phase 1, but with the stamps' next layers, filling the whole pattern with colors!!

                    

Phase 4: The acid and water bath to bring out the true colors of the dyes!

SLAP IT UP ON A STONE WALL, LET DRY, AND VOILA!!!

Bonus photo: Men working on yards of block print....amazing!

dream.love.discover,

Dachelle

Pray All Day, Dance All Night: How to Celebrate a Goddess in India!

**Special post for my Dad, since he ever so curiously asked me about this festival!

      On October 6th (sorry for the delay!!) we celebrated the end of Navratri (which wikipedia cleverly informs me literally means nine nights in Sanskrit-nava=nine, ratri=nights), which is the Hindu festival of warship for the Goddesses. The Goddess of choice, at least in Maharashtra, to be celebrated was Saraswati: Goddess of knowledge, music, arts, science, and technology. Seeing its Sanskrit connections, it was great that we got to celebrate the Pooja for Saraswati at the place Baba's (my host dad!) grandfather founded. We were invited to a library, which Baba is trustee for, where Sanskrit books that are about 100 years old are stored! The library complex also has dormitory rooms for boys, who are studying Sanskrit and the like in Pune, offering scholarships to many of the students. Baba was sooooooooo adorable as he showed us around the library, his office, and the temple his grandfather built upstairs (it is very rare that a temple is on the second floor of a building!), beaming with pride. The library is working hard to preserve the books as they are getting old and becoming deteriorated. But, as Baba showed us, they have been making copies of the books to sell to scholars as well as working on a scanning system for the books to all be stored electronically. After the Pooja and a quick outing on Laxmi road, we headed back for some snacks...AND COFFEE!
      After lunch and meeting up with friends at my new obsession Costa Coffee (best iced lattes in India so far!) I put on my dancing shoes for an evening of Dandiya Raas (a traditional dance...with sticks)! It was SO.MUCH.FUN! Although none of us knew what we were doing at first, we took a cue from Wedding Crashers and just began joining circles that seemed to know what they were doing. Many of the Indians we met were more than happy to show us the steps their dancing circles were doing, counting out beats and showing us how to use our sticks. It was a night that truly renewed, refreshed, and reclaimed my love for being in India. I don't have a lot of pics to show for the night, but many of our morning of Pooja (prayer) at the library. Photocred to my friend Sara for the picture (who has THE BEST repertoire of photos of me making beautiful faces [note the sarcasm] in her facebook albums!)

(The man with the plan, aka, Baba's Grandfather)

(At the Temple!)

(Dormitories for the boys, many of whom are provided scholarships for their housing)

(The alter for Saraswati after the Pooja. Baba's Grandfather is buried behind the blue gate)

(Shelves upon shelves of copied Sanskrit. We got the privileged of seeing original, hand-written pages as well as color-copied pictures of the artwork from some of the books)

DANDIYADANDIYADANDIYA!!

(Brenna, Ilana, and I waiting for the Dandiya festivities to begin!!)

(The traditional dress for the Dandiya celebrations is absolutely gorgeous! Photocred goes to my friend Sara for having one of the only pictures of the actual dance-end of the festival I could find! <3)

(Minus the skates, you can get a pretty good idea of what we were doing during the celebration...also include much more jumping, liveliness, and smiling!)

**When I told you I would look into it, I wasn't kidding around Dad. I know how to get in-the-field, live research done in India, Dad!!

dream.love.discover.DANDIYA!,

Dachelle


PS. Look for posts on my trip to Mumbai, as well as the last week of classes coming up this week! xoxo

Weekend Warriors: Part 2...Just Monkeying Around!

     As the new weekend approaches (one that promises to be a lot more relaxed than the past wonderful two have been), I am fiiiiiiiiiiiinally getting around to posting about what are now old adventures. Last weekend I had a field trip for my Environmental Perspectives class to the Hill Station of Mahabaleshwar. I cannot believe places like this exist just 3 hours outside of the chaotic city I have come to call my home (for only a few more months if you can believe it!). Although we weren't told what we would be doing and had no idea how to prepare for our trip because we didn't know what to expect at all (I think the general consensus was that we would be living in the woods for the weekend sleeping outside under the stars being eaten by mosquitoes suffering a painful existence) it turned out to be an amazing trip! We took a journey to see the Western Ghats, went to a temple that is supposedly thousands of years old where we meditated at the origin of the Krishna River, stayed at and learned about organic farms, met the coolest old man EVER, and concluded our wonderful weekend of food, friends, and fun with a glorious trek through the mountains!


The Western Ghats:

(The breath-taking Ghats. The Western Ghats are the mountain range that run through the Western coast of India. Mahabaleshwar is nestled in the mountains. They were literally breath-taking as we were at such high altitude during our trip, but an absolutely beautiful sight to see for sure).

(This monkey-mamma and her baby kept us entertained for longer than you'd think. The baby was a bit unstable on the bars as we watched him slip quite a few times insistent that he still hold on to his food)

(Another picture of the Ghats. A ghat is generally a set of steps leading to a river, here you can see the ridges of the Western Ghats, which are certainly not stairs I would ever hope to attempt to climb.)

(There were monkeys everywhere at the site we stopped at...you can see the little bugger on the left luckily got his hands on my favorite food...STREET CORN, which I luckily got my hands on too...can you say delicious?!)

Shiva Temple:

(This temple, located at the origin of the Krishna River is thousands of years old!)

(After learning a bit about the temple, our professor led us in meditation. You can see why this would be the perfect place for it-just look at that view!)

Farmhouse Fun:

(We were lucky enough to stay at our professor's friend's organic farm! Not only was the house we stayed in tons of fun, the food we were served super delicious, the view beautiful, but the man who owned the farm-Peter was by far one of the coolest nearly-blind old men I have yet to meet. We all loved him and thanked him for the great time...Can you believe he climbed a mountain with us?!)

(His farm was filled with lime trees!)

(This lady goes down as a champion in my book, and slightly disturbing...in the picture on the left she is shown demonstrating a method of composting to us: take one part cow dung, one part water, and STIR WITH HANDS [gross] and slap it on some organic waste! In the picture on the right [after she touched the cow dung mind you] she demonstrated how to separate rice from its outer husk as well as how to use the grinder to make flour...it takes some serious effort as some of my friends learned. My friend Sai is shown in the picture giving the grinder a whirl!)

Final Day: A Brisk Trek up the mountains

(Our professor and Peter seemed to be overly ambitious at the beginning of the hike [or so I thought] as they pointed out that our ending point of the journey was far into the horizon as you can see in the picture on the right [note: the circled tower was where we would end our journey], but luckily we all made it safe and sound to our destination after many hours [not because of the difficulty, it was a super easy, light trek, but because we were asked to explore the world around us, stopping to look at flowers, waterfalls [mini ones like in the photo below and huge ones at the edges of the mountains], and maybe even stop to pick up a few toads!)

(definitely not up there with best photos ever of me, but the background was gorgeous...and stepping in the ice cold water to get to that tree felt AMAZING!)

dream.love.discover,

Dachelle

Weekend Warriors: Part 1

Hey there strangers!!! As promised, you get two posts on the wonderful weekend advenutres I have been on lately. First and foremost: adventures in Rural India from September 25th to September 27th!! A break I welcomed as we would be spending time learning about rural/village life in India (which meant no classes for this lucky duck Monday or Tuesday last week!!) During the trip, we learned about an NGO, BAIF, which works toward establishing sustainable economies for villagers mainly through supporting agriculture and educating farmers about environmentally-friendly practices such as Organic Farming techniques. We stayed at their facility and had the opportunity to see some of their efforts such as: seed storage/gathering to build up a database of thriving species of grains, corn, etc for each area they worked with; fields which grew these various varieties of crops; organic farming practices they encourage/educate farmers to be able to use such as making pesticides and fertilizers (I won't tell you the magic ingredient!); and a few of the farms which BAIF has helped support. We also got to visit two rural health facilities-one within a tribe and one which served a greater number of tribes (as well as aided rural women in child birth) AND as an EXTRA SPECIAL BONUS to our rural weekend, WE VISITED A TRIBAL VILLAGE!!!...It was definitely not the kind of tribal village I was expecting (small huts, no electricity, minimal clothing, and painted faces), but it was a great experience for sure!

BAIF:

(the BAIF facility where we stayed)

(creating a database of seeds that best thrive in various areas)

(more stored seeds from crops in the pictures above and below)

(Tricks of the Trade: BAIF educates farmers on organic methods including how to make your own fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers are made mainly through composting methods using worms and all compostable, natural wastes, while pesticides us a variety of the leaves shown in the colorful containers above that get grinded down, mixed with water, cow urine, and a few other ingredients to keep the pests away!)

(BAIF fields! Another trick BAIF has taught farmers is to plant one plant which is deep red in color (almost purple) in the field as it will work to attract all of the pests to itself while keeping the crops unharmed!)

(We also got to visit a farm owned by a family BAIF has helped through its work. These are mango and cashew trees BAIF has given to the family who can harvest their fruits and sell them for a living. Because the trees are still too young to produce fruit, BAIF has given the family flowering plants, which they can sell the flowers of to supplement their income until the trees are mature)

(Flowering plants given to supplement the family's income)

Rural Health Facilities:

(As many in rural villages are illiterate, the things we gather from the poster are about the same as what a villager would gather. How would you interpret what is being said through just these pictures? I would be personally inclined to conclude from the pictures that marriage causes either blood clots or some artery/blood problem...imagine that? More like high blood pressure!)

(Another odd finding at the health care facility were the pictures of Caucasian babies in Indian rural villages. Why?)

(The government offers many incentives to villagers in order to encourage them to get the proper care they need. This picture highlights one of the many efforts being worked toward: proper maternal care. During their first and second pregnancies, women can come to the health facility and stay in this room where they are given food, a bed, and even television-a luxury they often do not have at home in the village-as well as 400 rupees per day. This encourages women to give birth to their children in a safe place, not in a village which may use unsafe practices such as using rusty sickles to sever an umbilical cord. By compensating women they can ensure that women do not use excuses such as missing out on wages in order to get the proper care they need/deserve)

(Another health service center, this one located closer to the village for smaller medical needs)

Our day concluded with a trip to view this beautiful waterfall over tea and snacks!

Jawahar: Visiting the Tribal Village:

 

(I think many of us shared mutual curiosity with the villagers. Many of them came out and about to see us!)

(Just some kids playing on the stairs!)

(Some of the homes in the tribal village...not exactly the huts I was expecting)

(Some of the villagers make crafts-making animals/figurines out of paper mache (like what is shown above) or creating tribal art/paintings)

( I even made a friend while in the village! This is Pooja. She is a 12 year old girl, in 6th Standard. When we asked her what she wants to do after school, she said she wasn't sure, she just wanted to finish it first-a statement we could agree with even as college students!)

(This is my friend Lauren just hanging out with some village kids while waiting for the group to finish purchasing their tribal paintings. The little girl sitting near her loved having her picture taken with one catch-you had to show her the pictures you took that she was in)

(More children from the tribal village. These little boys were so adorable!)

Curious to know what I did this past weekend? Check out the second update of the day to be posted soon!!

dream.love.discover.

Dachelle xoxo