Silky

The site visits today took us to a sandalwood factory and a silk factory. Once again we saw the contrasts of India. Old buildings that were falling down, machines that were 30+years old, employees that were probable not paid very much, even in Indian terms. Both factories were government owned, so the state of the facilities should not have been a surprise. The sandal wood factory was not that impressive other than the boiler was from England and the heavy equipment used to process the wood was all from Germany. Once again the Germans show their abilities to produce equipment that you can be abused and still have it work.

The silk factory was very cool. The process that is used to turn the silk worm into fabric was awesome to watch. The process of making fabric with designs was also interesting to watch. It is not a precise process and lengths of fingers and string is used to measure where the patterns start. I also look at the manufactures of the equipment, thinking would see a place in India that made the equipment, but once again, the sourcing of equipment came from over seas but this time it was from Japan. Go figure.