Thursday was the field trip day. We left the ISEC Campus at 6am and headed to the Mandya district located about 3 hours east of Bangalore. To better fit in with the crowd (if that is possible with my fair skin and light hair), I wore the traditional Indian outfit consisting of a long tunic, shawl, and loose pants lent to me by my boss (I must admit it was incredibly comfortable).On the way, we stopped for breakfast, and I tried some more traditional Indian breakfast foods. I must say that here people eat mostly salty things for breakfast, while I need some sugar in the morning...however, the local rice-flour pancake, or dosa, is quite tasty dipped in sugar.
Our first stop was at the water supply system. For a Russian turned Westerner like myself, it is hard to imagine a dryland area where people don't have access to irrigation. However, this is the case of most places in Asia and Africa. We met with the representatives of a water users association and talked to them about how they manage their watershed. While that part was interesting, I was also excited about experiencing a few new things along the way. Seeing how rice paddy is grown in standing water, noticing many Hindu mini-temples along the road, and watching how local women go about de-husking their millet crops gave me further insights into the local culture.
One very exciting experience was learning how silk is made. At one of the houses, the ladies showed us shelves full of silk worms eating mulberry leaves before they mature and begin forming cacoons. Then the matured worms are put into the round tubes made out of banana (?) leaves and left there to form their cocoons. Then, the cocoons are taken to a silk factory, where the actual silk is spun.
Our next stop was supposed to be with a group caught in a water dispute; however, when we got to the site, it turned out to be a massive group protest...We were escorted to a place in the middle, photographed numerous times, and addressed by the leaders of the protest as if we were coming to join forces with them. This was my first real-life experience with a mass social movement, and I must admit that I felt a bit uncomfortable (Im starting to suspect that Im a bit agoraphobic).
Since I have been eating vegetarian since I got to India, my carnivore gene was demanding meat, which I ordered at a lovely restaraunt where we stopped for lunch. I learned my lesson...don't ask for meat in India. Besides being the food of a lower class, hence less elaborate, it was plain tough and hard to chew. After lunch we visited a Revenue Dept Office to observe their new system of land registration, which was rather interesting since most villages in India have numerous private plots in addition to a number of common-property areas.
The best part of the day came at the end. On the way back home we stopped at a lovely bird sanctuary and had a relaxing boat tour to see and hear numerous birds that migrate from other parts of India, North Africa, and even Siberia and Canada for a few months to this sanctuary that spans several mini-islands. We also saw several crocodiles, one of which slowly snuck upon a little bird lingering on the lower branch of a tree and snatched it for his dinner.
The day ended on a 3-hour bus ride during which we were subjected to watching this very Indian (hence, silly with lots of singing and dancing) movie which apparently was a big hit when it first came out. Overall, it was a very enlighting day which put many theoretical concepts that I deal with in my everyday work into real-life perspective.
