The tribal roundtrip. Day 3

Day 3. And I am getting dusty to the core of my soul. There has been no shower around. But there is only one more night to go. Tomorrow evening will see me getting soaked.

Flower beauty. In between all the khaki, there are some of these jewels.

The child of a blacksmith. A cowbell.

On my way to the Great Rann of Kutch. It is a huge expanse of salt. Shining white with no features or contrasts. Here we are on the road out to a tourist parking in the middle of nowhere. Some human installations are still visible trough the mirages. I felt thirsty only by watching it!

Out hiking. There is a weird beauty to it. But you feel so small and vulnerable. This place is lethal. I walked almost an hour away from the parking ground. leaving behind me the garbage Indians are unable to let be throwing everywhere, and  all other people. It was a walking on the moon experience. Total silence. Only the crunching sounds of salt being crushed under my sandals. It felt like i was the only living thing on a strange planet.

Gathering firewood

Close up of a piece of Kutchi furniture.

And a look at the whole piece. 

Teabreak.

Muslim village girls.

We stopped in a small, far away, market village.

His way of posing.

A motorcycle truck in a local market.

A camel with tattooed face awaits a burden.

An elderly rabari woman. Note her tattoos and her elongated earlobes.

Different woman-same type of tattoos.

A camelian roadblock.

The abbot of Than monastery, 60 kilometers from Bhuj. It is a temple complex where only some of the buildings are in use. Others are more or less ancient, 500 year old ruins. It is set at the foot of the Dinodar hill-an extinct volcano. The temple belongs to the Kanfata sect.

The day is nearing it's end. The sleeping place is in sight-at the temple on top of the mountain. And it is walking up to it. Like the monastery, this is a Kanfata site. The temple is dedicated to Dharmanath. He was a Tirthankara-one who have conquered Samsara-the cycle of birth and death. Legend tells he stood on his head for 12 years at the top of this mountain as penance for a course he had made. The gods begged him to stop. He set the condition that the first thing he looked at, became barren. And the first thing he looked at was what became The Rann of Kutch. So it worked.

The temple on the top. Small and attractive with a superb view over the plains below. There is a caretaker which live up there most of the time. In addition to take care of the temple and performing the evening ritual-often in solitary with recorded music thundering down to the nearest settlements-he also works down in the village. Trekking up and down most days.When we arrived, we were served tea. Later it was rice and some curry before bedtime-a mattress in a big and now empty dormitory room.

The tribal roundtrip. Day one.

The Kutch district of western Gujarat is an area where several tribal groups live. It is one of those photogenic, exotic, fascinating Nat Geo style type of places every traveller want to bag. I decided on a multi day trip to meet them, and to see some of the excellent craft produced in this area being made. I got myself a guiding tuk tuk driver trough the curator of the Aaina mahal palace in Bhuj, and in the morning next day-after having got my filling of sugarcane juice- we left. It was going to be a long day, meeting lot of different people.

I already had eaten breakfast-chay and a few samosas. Those are sort of a fried pastry made with maidaflour which is bleached and very finely milled wheat. The samosas comes with a variety of fillings depending on where you are. With it one often get chili sauce as a dipping.

Breakfast or not, it wasn't long before the first chaybreak and a little bit of people watching. This man with an axe is a herder coming to town-without his animals.

It is an arid country, but camels thrive here.

Nests of s weavingbird colony.

We visited a village where everybodys livehood is weaving. They use two types of looms-this huge, 20 meter long outdoor version and the more standard indoor loom used everywhere.

The operators of the long loom, an elderly couple of the Rabaritribe.

Atractive yarn.

A rabariherder of the younger generation at work. His axe over his shoulders. The rabaris are thought to have left the iranian plains over a millenia ago. They moved in to this area from Rajasthan some 8-00 years ago.

And one of the elder generation. The rabaris used to be nomadic, now most of them are semi nomadic, or completely settled. This white attire is what is traditionally worn by the rabariherders. Understandable, considering the heat they live in.

A new teastop at a roadside teashop. Some locals have gathered for some quality time. Arriving here in the company of a translator-it is vital as no english is spoken-is great fun, and the locals are quite including.

The tea kitchen in what the owner ironically call Hotel Maharajah.

My tea is heated with charcoal, a much used fuel in this area.

A rabariman with hennacolured beard, fashionable in these parts. The rabaris came into being when the hindugod Shiva put them on earth to tend Parvatis camels.

There is no water in any of the houses around. One must get it from the well. Here returning with two pots of water.

Hoisting up a water jar. I got to try the next one, it is hard work if lot of water is needed. This girl is a charmer and she was a very willing photomotiv

Young girls are curious about the visitor. Few outsiders come to this dusty, remote little settlement.

Laundry. The arched concrete house is a disaster relief house, set up after a big earthquake.

The house to the left was abandoned after the last earthquake.

The icecream vendor is in town. Word is out.

Doing the yearly maintenance of the courtyard-a mix of mud and cowdung is plastered on the surface.

Old rabari man in a village. They are thought to have moved out from the iranian plains more than a millennium ago.

Just returned from the fields, but cooking up some tea brewed on local herbs.

Mother and daughter posing.

Laundry.

Add caption

The nests of a weavingbird colony.

Rogan painting. An almost died out artform.The artists boil castor oil until it gets rhesinlike. Then it is mixed with colour. Painting is maybe not a good word to describe the art, since the resin is applied rather than painted. It is all done on freehand, and what is done can't be undone. Bad if the error is made just before a piece taking a month to make is finished.

Often the painters fold the cloth, making a mirrored image. Something demanding a steady hand to make it perfect.

In the late afternoon we arrived in a hamlet in the outskirt of Khavda village. It is inhabited by another tribe-the Harija, whose belief is Islam. Visually they are spectacular-their cloting, jewellery and houses are vividly decorated and unlike most seen elsewhere. More on that in the continuation in day number two.