Kutch - My Voyage of Discovery

Kutch is a land of paradoxes.

Summer temperatures in this district average 41^°C and can touch 50^°C, making it one of the hottest regions in India. Winters, on the other hand, can see the mercury dropping below 0^°C!

When I thought of Kutch, I imagined it as one vast, barren desert. But in reality, several parts of this district are lush green beyond imagination, where plantations from 10 acres to over 100 acres are common, producing world class dates, kesar mangoes and pomegranates. This district is home to Banni, the largest grasslands in Asia. It is also home to the White Desert and to the Kaalo Dungar (Black Hill).

The Rann of Kutch

Banni Grasslands

The White Desert

Kaalo Dungar - the highest point in Kutch,

Kutch, lying in the northwest of Gujarat state, is the largest district in India: it is actually larger than 9 entire states of India! With a 350-km long coastline to its south, 300 kms of desert in the north and so much in between!

While there is hardship, even poverty in several parts of Kutch, the district is also home to some of the wealthiest people in the world; it’s just that they lead a simple lifestyle and don’t show off their wealth. 

Bollywood movies often romanticize the people of this district as desert-dwelling nomadic cattle-herders who are barely literate, but Kutch is also home to several rich traditional crafts like weaving, embroidery, wood carving, metal work and leather work, all of which are now famous the world over, thanks to the efforts of organizations like Shrujan and several others.

One image of the Kutchi community is very accurate though, whoever you speak to: they are an immensely hardy, extremely savvy and yet very simple, kind and hospitable people, who have traveled and settled across the world for the past several generations, in the bargain creating a highly potent and efficient global business network.

This year, I celebrated my 18^th birthday by taking off on a five-day trip to Kutch! I spent the day packing everything I needed into my black backpack, and after dinner that evening, we were off by the Bandra-Bhuj express!

Our base during the trip was the guesthouse of Shrujan, an organization working with craftswomen across Kutch. Each of the beautiful guest rooms were styled on the bhunga, the traditional houses in rural Kutch. Bhungas are round mud huts with thatched grass roofs. The combination of mud and cow dung used to build the structure keeps the extreme climates of Kutch at bay: the interiors remain surprisingly cool during the harsh summers and comfortably warm during chilly winters – and having stayed in one for five days, I can vouch for this technology! Unfortunately, most of the old bhungas in many villages of Kutch were destroyed during the 2000 earthquake, and have since been replaced by ‘modern’ brick and concrete structures.

Historically, Kutch was an arid district with limited indigenous food crops and hardly any vegetables to boast of. Today, Kutchi cuisine makes use of everything from cauliflower and capsicum to rice (a water intensive food crop) in their daily diet. But these trends are very recent developments – only 35 odd years old. They are far from the truly traditional food culture of this region. And that is what I went to explore on this trip.

Kutch is home to many, many communities – of craftsmen and pastoralists, Hindus and Muslims, Vankars, Rabaris, Jats. And I’ve been told that food cultures vary from community to community across the region.

Being a large district, the distances are vast, and in just five days we covered over 700km! We were lucky to travel in the relative comfort of air-conditioned four wheel drive vehicles… many individuals still travel around on motorbikes in the scorching heat, and before motor vehicles became popular in Kutch, people relied on camels and camel carts, or simply walked the vast distances. Many nomadic maldhari communities still do!

I must acknowledge the unstinting help I got from several people that made my first visit to Kutch a fruitful one: Pritibhabi (Shroff), a respected family-friend, advised us on the various places to visit and people to meet. She also put us in touch with Nihalbhai Rathod, a research resource from Shrujan and resident expert on the history and cultures of Kutch; he took us around on the first three days. Sunil Vaishnav, a childhood friend of my father’s who now oversees Kutch Crop Services (KCS, a large organization doing some path-breaking work to promote agricultural technology in Kutch) gave us an overview about the development of world-class date plantations in Kutch. Hirjibhai Rhathod, also from KCS, showed us with everything we wanted to know about the advent of commercial agriculture in the district. I don’t know how much I would have learned without the guidance of these people, and the time they gave me.

All these people cautioned me that five days would hardly be enough time to see all that Kutch has to offer in the field of food, wild or cultivated, raw or cooked, traditional or modern. If I wanted to see the true bounty of the food plants in Kutch, March-April would be the season of bloom, and post-monsoon June and July would be fruiting season. Everyone told me that I simply had to plan another trip. And plan one I shall!

As for this trip, although five days was barely enough to scratch the surface, I still learnt SO much, so much I want to share, that there is no way it will all fit into one post! So keep reading as I keep writing…