How do I even begin to describe the beauty and astonishing things that we have seen in the first week of this trip.

Here’s the quick version:

DELHI
Qutab Minar
Sanskriti Museums
Humayans Tomb
India Habitat Centre
– Visual Arts Gallery, Srishti Rana Menon
Parliament
Presidential Palace
India Gate
Rajiv Gadhi Handicrafts Bhawan

JAIPUR
City Palace
Jantar Minar
India Institute of Craft & Design
Anokhi Cafe & Store
Awdhesh Kumar
– Textile Factory & Store
Furniture Factory
Verasat Hotel Dinner
Amber Fort & Palace

Now the long story 🙂
Seeing all these sights within one week has made it feel like 2 weeks has gone by! Although at the end of each day we were exhausted, in a good way.
I’m not going to go into absolute detail about each place we went or both you and I would be here for a entire week! So instead I am going to write about two of my top experiences of the week.

As a student of Industrial Design I never really had a super in depth knowledge about textiles. I knew that coming to India was going to help me become more knowledge able about that craft. If textiles was a sundae, I only knew about the cherry on top!

HOLY COW
Seeing how much effort thought and process there is to textiles took me by surprise! At the Sanskritti Museums there was a beautiful and very detailed history of textiles. There were step by step displays on block printing, weaving, and this thing called “Ikat”.

Ikat is the process of tying off threads in bunches to create a strategic pattern on the thread. The wrappings act as a resist when the thread is dipped in dye. When using Ikat both the horizontal and vertical, only the vertical or only the horizontal threads can be dyed. It might seem like it isn’t very hard, but trust me on this, it is!

There was a huge display of weavings and embroideries  so detailed they looked like there we drawn by hand. These embroideries were about 15ft x 6ft in size. It would take 6+ people to make one as well as nearly a whole week. It is all done by hand, which is mind blowing.

So I had no idea what we were getting into when we went to dinner at the Verisat Hotel. I thought it was just another restaurant that Connie and Kirsten had found. Well was I ever wrong!

We walked into the hotel and I kind if thought to myself this looks very cool. Then BAAM we walk into this large room decorated to the MAX! I’m talking about silver plated tables, mini thrones for each person, live Rajasthani music, dancers and dinner! We were served individual dinner platters, and I mean a platter, not a dish. It had 6 different main course tasters and 4 desserts, everything was delicious!

So excited for what is to come next!

As I have been taught here,
We’ll meet again – Phir Milenge,

Jamie