Khweng - A village in the abode of clouds

The name of the village Khweng comes from the local Khasi term ‘Khongweng’ which means curved around. When one takes the road to enter the village, it’s so curved around that one can see the whole village. Over time, ‘Khongweng’ was shortened for ease to ‘Khweng’. A village of 100 households, the first thing that struck me on entering Khweng is how well-kept & clean the streets are. With the verdant mountains as a backdrop, the streets were lined with a series of traditional cane & modern tin cans that act as waste bins. I was happy to note that they were moderately full, showing that the villagers actively used them & that they weren’t just for display.

Khweng is an active weaving village, so a must-do on a trip there is a visit to the weavers’ quarters where I was able to  see silk weaving on the frame looms in progress. Meghalaya produces three out of the four varieties of silk available in the world. They are – Eri; locally known as Ryndia, Muga and Mulberry. The type of Eri silk woven in Khweng is often called Ahimsa silk because the worm is not killed during the production process. The  coarser Eri silk is quite different in look & feel to the silk we are familiar with, but it has the useful quality of keeping the wearer cool in summers & warm in winters & are most commonly fashioned into scarves.

Weaver working at her frame loom

The village has rearers, spinners & few weavers of silk but they often do not do this exclusively; they are involved in agriculture & use their spare time for Eri related activities. However, they are slowly coming to understand that keeping these fading traditions alive is an important investment for the future – an activity which through continuous practice they can keep doing long after they have lost their strength to contribute on the fields. For instance, one of the elderly weavers I met said: “I am a very old lady living a simple life… but now I only rear and spin to provide for my two disabled sons & my four grandchildren. I am poor, but I have enough food for a day. Eri silk is a blessing from our heavenly fathers.”

Close up of the frame loom

A highlight of my visit was a meal at the Mei-Ramew café (Mother Earth café) run by Kong Plantina Mujai who has been in the business since 30 years. It is a small establishment, serving simple traditional food with local ingredients, but the care taken in preparing it & the generous, affectionate manner in which it was served won my heart over. Though I could not develop a taste for the traditional Kwai, the local variety of betel nut that is much loved & consumed faithfully after every meal. At the café, one can even enjoy some of the fresh seasonal produce such as pineapples. Kong Plantina also grows her own mushrooms, in a room specially dedicated to this activity. One of my favourite dishes had the specialty fish, that is bred in the freshwater streams of the paddy fields & caught by the villagers, as the main ingredient.

Pineapples displayed outside the Mei Ramew cafe

Mushrooms growing under Kong Plantina’s care

The love & respect that the community has for each other is the foundation which brings unity among them – “We are living in peace & harmony”, said the villagers. This is not merely lip service but is directly linked to the “we feeling” of working together which is practiced till today in Khasi villages, via concepts such as Ka rep Bara, which means working together particularly for agricultural activities. There is a strong tendency to refer to a connection with the past and tradition when thinking about well-being – for themselves & the community.

If one has prior experience of visiting rural areas in India (or anywhere in the world for that matter), one will know that generally men are dominant & women are kept in the shadows. Visiting Khweng showed me that this part of the country is an exception. The men & women were both equally forthcoming & greeted me immediately with a handshake. The women actively lead & conduct the Eri silk production as well. In fact, in group discussions the women lead the conversation & are as adept at reading & writing as their counterparts.

Communicating with the villagers has to be through an interpreter, as they only speak the native Khasi language, but taking in the unique sights, smells & sounds of Khweng, truly proved to me that language is not a barrier when it comes to understanding local culture & the experience was all in all a hugely enriching & memorable one.

Village women chatting under the shade of tree.

In the foreground is a hand made waste bin.

All photos © Amrita Ravimohan

The writer visited Khweng village in Ri-Bhoi district Meghalaya during her stint in Shillong, North East India. As part of the Communications team of the Indigenous Terra Madre 2015, various such visits were undertaken by the team in the run-up to the event.

Veiled in Misteries

The Indian monsoon blankets the subcontinent for four months of the year but it bestows a unique kind of blessing on the ruins of Mandu. After months of a tormenting summer when the rains descend upon the sweltering rock, Mandu becomes enveloped in a mist which is thick with spirits that whisper tales of romance and betrayal from a time gone by. Perched atop the Vindhya mountains the city offers commanding views of the Malwa plateau and was therefore of strategic importance to the Ghuris, Khiljis, Mughals and the Marathas.

Starting from Indore on a muggy afternoon in a cab the 100 kms in between was primarily covered on the generic NH3. The lunch ingested at the quintessential roadside dhaba of jeera aloo, paneer masala, dal and rotis had its intended soporific effect and we woke to heavy rain pounding the car and the descending darkness of twilight. Nearing Mandu and once we quit the NH3, the road passed through dense forests and curved along tortuously till we reached the MPTDC resort at almost midnight. The rains had no plans to let up for the rest of the night and it was beginning to look like the trip would be a washout.

The morning however woke to soft cool clouds gathering the strong and unforgiving monuments of Mandu in a heart-melting embrace. Cutting through the thick and lingering condensation that had descended over the ruins, it felt as if history had suddenly come alive. The horizon was completely cloaked in a white haze and the city would only reveal her mysteries to us bit by bit. No wonder the Mughals retreated to Mandu in the Monsoons, for where else could one situate the legend of the romance of Rani Roopmati and Baz Bahadur.

As we walked along the nearly 45 km long walls of the fortifications looking onto the severely descending plateaus, one couldn’t help but wonder how many stories the walls had been witness to.

The deep spaces of the Jama Masjid stood out in strong relief against the blank white canvas of the fog and the endlessly repeating column bays of the Ashrafi Mahal created a visual vortex that threatened to suck you in and transport you into another time. I wondered, what mysteries of the afterlife were softly silhouetted inside Hoshang Shah’s tomb and was there wisdom to be found as one approached the soft white light that glowed at the end of the tunnel…

The sprawling Jahaz Mahal seemed to float in between several manmade lakes and complex but beautifully ornate channels that collected water appeared to decorate the landscape intermittently. The memories of around fifteen thousand queens and concubines and their servants, frolicking through the various spaces of the palace suddenly became tangible images when one glanced down at the vast unending grounds.

As the sun climbed high and the mist retired eventually it was time to leave behind the haunting mysteries of Mandu and reluctantly return to our prosaic lives.

I would recommend combining the trip to Mandu along with a visit to Maheshwar. One can live in the rooms at the Ahilyabai Holkar fort and palace, watch the Maheshwari weavers at work and enjoy a night on the banks of the Narmada River.

All photos © Ekta Idnany & Sahil Latheef

High Flying in Cappadocia

Cappadocia is an experience that instantly promises to transport you out of this world. Situated in the region of Central Anatolia in Turkey, it can be reached by taking a two hour flight out of Istanbul or for the more relaxed or on-a-budget-traveller private buses ply from Istanbul and reach you there in approximately ten hours.

We reached Kayseri airport just as the sun was coming up and the effect of seeing the rays break across the Moon-like landscape of Cappadocia was breath-taking. In fact Cappadocia will leave you spell bound at every turn. It is where fantasy and science fiction novels are dreamt up. The entire region is a plateau dotted by volcanic mountains and the geological terrain is made up of the soft sedimentary and ignimbrite deposits from three to nine million year old volcanoes.

A short taxi ride took us to our hotel in Urgup, which is one of the more important and well connected towns in Nevshehir. Almost every hotel in Cappadocia is carved into the terrain and its pretty common to have cave- like rooms within the striated sedimentary stone. A small hike along the winding town- roads led us to a small Turkish wine factory where we took a wine tour, finishing it with a glass of the local wine. Famished after the exploits of the day, we later stopped for lunch at a small wayside restaurant, that served us glasses of chilled Ayran -a yogurt based drink – along with the Kayseri Manti – tiny meat dumplings served in a yogurt based sauce. The flavours of Anatolian cuisine, with the stuffed breads, cheeses, tomato and lentil based sauces were very friendly to the Indian palate. After another short stroll we retired early in the evening to enjoy the spoils of the hotel and in eager anticipation of the next morning.

The next morning we woke while it was still pitch dark and bundled into the taxi waiting outside. A short drive took us to the site where hundreds of hot air balloons take flight every morning. As we reach the gathering point we found ourselves in the midst of several other people waiting and sipping cups of delicious Turkish tea. Suddenly in the pitch black one could see sporadic flashes of light as if fireflies were dancing in the distance. As the silhouettes of balloons started to become apparent gradually, the excitement of the group became equally palpable. The sky changed hues and one could see hundreds of balloons start to ascend simultaneously. The whole pink and blue sky looked like it was the backdrop to a seamlessly synchronized choreography.

As we ascended in one such balloon bit by bit the entire landscape started to become really clear. The birds’ eye view is definitely the best way to take in the Anatolian landscape at one glance. All at once we had a 360 degree vantage of the arid but beautiful landscape with its the wind denuded fairy chimneys and the red, green and yellow valleys. Even the slightest colour stood out in stark relief against the unending sand coloured canvas.

Suspended up in the sky one’s sense of sight is completely overwhelmed and if you can concentrate on the other senses then the unsettling silence of being thousands of feet above ground is punctuated by the periodically deafening bursts from the gas cylinders of the balloon.

After an hours flight the balloon gradually descended and the pilot and his team celebrated by popping bottles of non alcoholic champagne.

Back at the hotel we gorged on a well deserved breakfast of cheeses, olives, stuffed breads and dried fruit and headed on to trek the valleys that we had just witnessed from many feet above. The rest of the day we trekked through the wondrous Ihlara valley, discovered the ancient wonders hidden in the completely underground city of Kaymakli and sampled more of Kayseri’s delectable cuisine.

Ihlara Valley

Kaymakli underground city

Thoroughly enthralled and exhausted from the adventures of the day we got back to the hotel to thank our wonderful host, gather up our bags and get on the night bus back to Istanbul. Turkey had many more treasures for us to discover in the days to come….

All photos © Ekta Idnany