Travelled to the village of Narlai outside Ranakpur only to discover that I’d left my phone charger and adapter behind. Potential disaster! But no, this is India where the mobile phone is queen. Wandered down the road to find three tiny mobile phone stalls. Initially they didn’t have a iPhone lead, but then it turned out that the salesman just happened to be there on his motorbike bringing supplies. iPhone lead? No problem.
Whilst in Jodhpur we went to a Tie and Dye workshop at ‘Isha Silk’ run by Ishwar Dewani on the rooftop of his house. Neither of us knew what to expect and our only experience was back in the 60s.
So this is pretty different to those T-shirts back in the day. Ishwar first described the process he uses for his professional dying and then took us through a simplified version.
We were each give a square of silk folded over 4 times and tacked along 3 sides. We put blobs of dye in a number of places making sure it went all the way through.
Then we wound thread several times creating small knots in the centre of each blob. The material under the thread will retain the dye colour.
The material was then placed in a bleach solution so that it went completely white, rinsed, and then placed in a dye. It was rinsed again, dried in the sun, and then we removed the knots. Hey presto!
