Tuesday, May 22, 2007: Pochampally Village

I took the best set of photos yet two days ago in a small village outside of Hyderabad. It was incredible. You can see the condensed album in slideshow form at the bottom of the page. The full album (300+ photos that are very interesting along with several other albums from my trip) are also available at: www.http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mwashmore.

The village we visited was called Pochampally. It has been around for hundreds of years. The village is known for producing the finest silk sarees and fabrics in Southern India. Each family in the village produces its own Sarees in their respective homes. The entire process from dying to production is done in house. They do it all by hand relying on using a very complex hand loom. Its an extremely tedious process- as you can see in the photo above. Each individual strand is done weaved separately. Apparently it takes over 5 days to make a single saree which each family only sells for $1.50 to the retailers. The entire family takes part in the process from dusk until dawn. After watching a Saree get made, I decided to wander around the village itself. There is one main street of commerce surrounded by all of the homes producing the sarees. The people on the street were very intrigued by me since I was white.

Slideshow Below (Click to Enlarge)



The camera only made them more curious. While a few were a bit camera shy at first, they generally enjoyed and asked to have their picture taken (the best part was letting them see it on my screen afterwards). There is a 21 photo sequence a few girls and a boy standing outside a blue door. When they saw me outside at first, they would run to the door and then run away as I waved or said hello. Then they would creep back to take another peek. This went on for a few minutes until they all slowly made their way outside to have their pictures taken. They loved it. It was a pretty fun interaction. While walking through the village, a small collection of young boys (8 - 10 years old) followed me around for the entire time I was there, leading me by my hand, jumping on my shoulders and pointing to everything and saying "Photo, photo!" then "Supe" which means show me (they wanted to see it on the screen). They guided me all around through the homes and weaving through the backroads of the village. We had a ball. Its amazing how much fun you can have and emotional communication can occur despite a complete language and cultural barrier (not to mention age as well). One of the boys was a real character too. He kept jumping into photos that I was taking to pose and make faces. This was definitely the most enjoyable part of my adventurethus far. At the very end of the day, I bought them all treats at the bakery. More to come... I can't wait to tell you about my night clubbing in Hyderabad with the MBAs! I definitely have a hangover.