I am due to leave India this week after working here in Delhi for a year, so last week I took my last few days' leave to escape to the hills of Kumaon, Uttarakhand, in the Himalayan region of north India. I visited the NGO Avani (www.avani-kumaon.org) - keen to see their spinning, weaving and natural dye projects, and also to spend a few days in the beautiful countryside. I will be shortly writing an article on Avani's textiles initiatives for Ethical Fashion Forum The Source magazine - which will be available to subscribers in the coming months. Avani turned out to be the perfect choice for my getaway as I was thoroughly impressed by the organisation's ethos and well-organised projects.
Getting to Avani however, which is based in a village called Tripuradevi, near Berinag, proved to be quite an adventure. I had booked the overnight train from Delhi to Haldwani, and then needed to travel 200 km by road (usually about 8 hours considering the windy, hilly roads). I decided to go by shared 10-seater jeep rather than the bus, and set off in the front seat at 7am. Unfortunately it started to rain, and the rain continued all day - which meant there were a few landslides (apparently one knocked a truck off the road, but we only saw small ones in action with rocks the size of footballs tumbling down). We had to take a different route which meant we eventually arrived in Almora (about half way) after 8 hours. It was getting foggy and would soon be dark so the best bet was to stay in a hotel in Almora for the night - a beautiful hillside town in itself so I was happy to rest there and take some photos. The next day, the journey should have taken about 4 hours up to Berinag - but we were unlucky again as the direct road was closed due to landslides and we ended up taking another 8 hours. We went to Bageshwar in order to change jeeps there and eventually ended up taking a total of 5 vehicles - as the drivers kept stopping to combine their passengers rather than continuing half empty as people got out along thew way. Our final shared jeep stopped in a village 12 km from our destination and the driver told us he wasn't going to Berinag after all and that perhaps we should walk! There was luckily a cafe in this village and I was able to phone Avani who kindly sent out their driver to pick us up.
Avani's guest rooms have bathrooms inside and are furnished with their own handmade woollen curtains and rugs. The balconies in front of the rooms have wonderful views of the hills. Avani's founders live on-site, along with employees recruited from the local area, and a number of foreign and Indian interns. Everyone eats vegetarian food, served in a communal kitchen. There is a natural dyeing centre, a tailoring room, and workshops where villagers are taught to make solar lamps. All the buildings are run on solar panels and the rainwater is harvested and fed into the taps. The drinking water is filtered rainwater.
The day after arriving, along with a couple of other visitors we were taken to a nearby village (10 minutes by car, and then 45 minutes hiking downhill - which meant quite a tiring hike back up the steep hill afterwards!) to see the hand spinning and weaving centre. I'll be writing about this in more detail for the Ethical Fashion Forum Source article, and about how to collaborate with Avani's natural textiles initiatives, so will just include a few pictures here.
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