On the silk trail

Take a relaxed tour of the silk cocoon market of Sidlaghatta peppered with quirky facts about the history of silk, a rendezvous with weavers and a lavish lunch at the base of Nandi hills

It is an intriguing sight: a steady stream of cyclists in blue shirts, rendered diminutive by the impossibly large bundles balanced on their heads, ringing their bells incessantly as they make their way out of the silk cocoon market at Sidlaghatta. This is where mounds of cocoons are sold by silk worm breeders, bought by weavers and transported by cyclists, whose bundles can sometimes weigh an alarming 50 kg. The market is about 60 kilometres from Bangalore but it is unlikely that I would ever have found myself here if it had not been for the heritage tour, "Handcrafted in Karnataka: The Making of Its Silk" that I have signed up for. The tour is being conducted by Carnelian, a company launched a few months ago by four INTACH members united in their passion for history, culture and architecture. The silk cocoon market is a sort of halfway mark of the silk trail, which is their second tour.

Unlike guided tours abroad where the guides provide a constant stream of information, Carnelian's culture trail is more relaxed. There are no detailed itineraries or announcements when you board the bus. While we are all familiar with silk and the legend of the Chinese princess who supposedly discovered it when a cocoon fell into her cup of hot water, one does not realise that this material is over 5,000 years old. It was guarded jealously for 3,000 years by the Chinese, who went to the extent of executing anyone found smuggling silkworms or even the mulberry bushes it feeds on. Meera Iyer, one of the organisers, adds another interesting tidbit - silk could be even older because it was also discovered recently at Indus Valley sites. A more disturbing detail is that after thousands of years of subjugation, the poor silk moth cannot survive on its own and dies after laying eggs.

With these facts to mull over, we are driven to a grainage, which is where silkworms are reared and which, we are warned, might smell a little. "Little" is an understatement for the pungent odour but after a while you get used to it sufficiently to see the thousands of cocoons, which look like cotton wool balls, and the hundreds of tiny eggs each moth lays. In the next stage, we visit the place where worms are kept in what is called the chakki centre. At the next stop, the worms are 10 days old, long and white, but they too have no time for you - their sole intent is to keep eating the mulberry leaves, which they are fed with thrice a day. The family that rears them at this stage also keeps them till they weave the cocoons that are finally sold in the market at Sidlaghatta. The cocoon is then bought by the weavers to be made into yarn. We visit the house of one of them, Shamshir. It takes 7 to 8 kg of cocoons to make 1 kg of yarn, and Shamshir and the two women he employs manage to make 3 kg a day after working 10 hours. The cocoons are dropped into boiling water and the threads unravelled.

During the tour, most of the explaining has been done by the locals at the various sites. But at a couple of places, such as at the weaver's unit, I do wish it had been done in a more structured manner or that the organisers had done the explaining, because some of it got lost, at times in translation. This was the only hitch in an otherwise well-organised tour.

Lunch follows, and is one of the highlights of the trip because of the food and the location of the Silver Oak Farm at the base of Nandi Hills. The food is delicious, and several vegetables are from the farm.

After the stupor-inducing spread, Iyer passes around some samples of different silks, and a map with the various silk-weaving centres in the country - China might outpace us in production (being responsible for 85 per cent of the world's output) but India is the only country with so many different varieties, such as tussar, eri and muga silks.

Most of the tour has been covered by now and only the dyeing units, where I see the yarn take on the most exotic hues, and the final weaving unit are left. At the weaving centre, where the yarn finally transforms into silk saris, I can't really figure out how those many, many threads in a seemingly complex web finally become an exquisite sari.

It's a long tour, nearly 10 hours, but the drive through the countryside is pleasant. Carnelian has more tours on the cards, including a three-day trip to Hampi, which includes a visit to a prehistoric site near Hospet. and another later in the month to Badami.

The silk trail is priced at Rs 2,800 per person, including breakfast and lunch. To know about Carnelian's tours, mail carnelian.blr@gmail.com