Bagru Textiles, Home of the Minerva Fellows in India

12/4
I had an interesting start to my morning. I initially woke up feeling better, but the headache I’ve been having immediately returned. I keep getting headaches on the trip, which I’m guessing is from dehydration. At breakfast nothing looked too appealing to me so I just had some corn flakes type cereal and some milk. After eating about half the bowl I looked down and noticed a bug in my cereal! After being completely repulsed, Caroline said she thought it was a baby cockroach! After looking again that seemed to be accurate. Can you believe that?! Ugh I’m repulsed just thinking about it, but it’s India, can’t do anything about it!
So the main event for the day was to go to Bagru textiles, the place where the Minerva Fellows have been working. Jeremy started the project after graduating in ’10 and Emily is the new fellow for this year. Jeremy is officially done with the program, but wanted to see it completed, so he came back to keep it going. Bagru is a small village in Rajestan and Jeremy and Emily live with a host family there.
When we arrived at the village we got to see how the textiles are made and how these people live every day. They have different techniques for block printing, dying, washing and drying, etc. They took us around to all the different places where this stuff happens throughout the village, and we even got to make our own tank tops with block prints. I bought a couple of things here because it’s so nice having things when you know where they came from.
Finally we headed out to the hotel we’re currently at called Kishangarh and Roopangarh fort. This place is really interesting; it’s 400 years old and converted into a place for guests to stay. The bus didn’t fit on the road up to the hotel, so we had to get picked up by jeeps. This was such a frightening experience; I got stuck sitting in the very back which was completely open. I honestly thought I was going to fall out, but thankfully it was a short trip. We’re only staying here for another night until our next stop, which I’m told is a really fancy tent in the middle of the desert. This should be interesting!