India Awaits: A day out and about - Silk Farming and Tomatoes ....

This week I had the pleasure of joining a good friend and her brother (who is currently visiting India) to venture out of Bangalore and visit a silkworm farm, then the silk market and, lastly, a tomato market. The area is further East of Bangalore towards Chennai an area I have not been to. The roads in Bangalore at present are really bad, due to all the late monsoon rains, so it was quite a long journey.

First stop was the silkworm farm run by a local man and his brother. My only experience of Silkworms were when I was a child in Australia with friends having them as a school project. Nothing like a full business that would be successful enough to feed two families. They were very happy to show us around and outline the process of the farming. His wife was out in the field farming to feed their cattle, while he 'managed' the worms. It always surprises me how the women are left with most, if not all, the physical work. We saw the eggs placed on multiple sheets of paper stating the date they were placed, and that is the commencement of the whole process - it is a 30 day cycle which this farmer follows very closely.

The size of the man's 'worm farming' rooms, compared to his families living quarters was amazing. The 2 families of 4 each, and the grandfather lived in 2 rooms of the 'barn area'. The worms were places in at least 6 rooms that we saw. The farmers children and nephews were home on holidays for Dussarha and they had so much fun showing us around. They wanted us to see their cows, chickens, tractor and were desperately keen to take photos of us with their Dad's phone. The eldest girl was in charge and she probably used up the entire phones memory in sly photos of the 3 of us. We offer to pose and smile, which we did, but she also wanted ones of us just walking around, putting our shoes on, patting a cow. It was really very sweet.

Once hatched, the worms will eat, eat, eat until they are big, fat and juicy and then spin their cocoon. The farmer takes them to market at this point (with chrysalis inside). We were lucky to visit the local Silkworm Market which is an all male affair. So, I'm sure it was quite the site to have 2 white ladies and 1 white man wandering around asking questions. They appeared to actually really enjoy it and wanted us to know all about the processes and also the quality of the silk.

Once again, there are a lot of man standing around for a lot of the day but when there was a sale to be done, it was all quite animated. I have purchased silk here in India and the quality is beautiful, so seeing the early stage processing was great fun. Previously, I have seen the spinning of the silk, so it was nice to see the step prior.

After a few more photos, we were off to see a huge tomato market. I have often been heard to say that India runs on Onions - but I must say that Tomatoes must be a close second. They are everywhere and used in everything.

This market was just on the side of a very main road with no real logic to its placement or processing. It was so chaotic that I was nearly collated by 2 trucks and then nearly hit by a heap of crates being unloaded from a truck - all in the space of about 2 minutes. It is go, go, go here. I suppose with tomatoes being so perishable they try and move the stock quickly, and with the heat being such an issue, it would be best to sell quick !! Another all male affair led to lots of stares and lots of 'down tools' to see what we were up to. Not a lot really - just some photos and a few chats with some truck drivers about their ornate truck decorations. They really are a sight to see - another blog maybe ?

We had such a fun day out and its always nice to visit new places - can't wait for our next adventure.