As implied in our introduction to India page; as long as we were going to be in the neighborhood to tour the Golden Triangle, it was only logical that we would want to explore the rich tradition of textiles in southern India.
We had an introduction into rug weaving and regional block printing techniques in Jaipur but each region of India seems to have unique textile traditions so we decided to dovetail our Golden Triangle Tour with a Tamil Nadu Textile Trail tour.
Our entry point into the South India was Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu and a city of roughly 9 million people located on the Bay of Bengal. The city was formally known as Madras but was changed to Chennai in 1996 as a part of a nationwide trend towards adopting less Anglicized names for Indian cities and states. Coincidentally, this was 27 years after the name of the State of Madras was changed to Tamil Nadu (in 1969.)
While the Tamil ethnic group makes up only about 6% of the total population of India, its members represent almost 90% of the population in the State of Tamil Nadu.
When we were planning our tour we googled textile tours in India and found plenty to choose from. The one we picked was the Textile Breakaway – Tamil Nadu Tour offered by Engaging Journeys Private Limited.
It is possible to take textile tours in many different states of India but this one was about the right length for us, we liked that it included visits not only to weaving centers but also to block printing workshops and we liked that it was in a southern state and not all that close to our Golden Triangle Tour geography. Our contact at the agency was easy to work with and offered good suggestions on hotels. She even allowed us to pull our Chennai accommodations from the tour (price) as we had plenty of reward points to stay at the Radisson Blu Hotel Chennai City Centre for free.
In addition to Chennai, we visited Kanchipuram and spent nights in Pondicherry (2), Karaikudi and Madurai during our textile tour before flying back to Delhi for a night to catch our international flight home
Footage for the video below was recorded in various textile specific locals on our Tamil Naud Textile Tour. In putting it together we realized we hadn’t shot video of everything we saw but does includes a few selected scenes of the Qualamkars, textile craftsmen keeping the traditions of handloom weaving, block and hand printing textiles in Chennai, a weaver of the famous Kanchipuram silk saris and giant spinning warp at the Gandhigram Trust, a Khadi spinning and weaving centre in Madurai set up by none other than Gandhiji.
There are lots of photos on the other pages of this report that will fill in some of the gaps. clicking on any photo will take you to our Flickr page where even more photos can be found.