The Dhow Builders of Mandvi

In keeping with Lime Soda's line of handicraft stories, we thought that these guys deserved a blog post of their own.  They were making the largest, possibly most impressive, piece of "handicraft" we have ever seen, somuch so that we made a special excursion to Mandvi to see them at work.

We arrived at the charming, colourful little port city of Mandvi after traveling in a bumpy local bus from Bhuj for two hours. Mandvi was once the main port of Kutch, and is today an important center for the forgotten art of dhow building. The monsoon was showing its full force that morning, and although we were thankful to be on the bus, we wished it hadn't been quite as leaky.  As we entered the city and crossed the bridge over the estuary we were welcomed by the sight of about fifty boats in different stages of construction.  In the cloudy noon light, with their massive hulls lining both sides of the river and empty bamboo scaffolding surrounding them, the sight was quite eerie, as if taken from an other era.

As we were tired and hungry, we decided to check into our hotel and grab a bite to eat first. We chose the Rukmavati Hotel as it was formerly a hospital, and more importantly, ad self-catering facilities.  In fact, the hotel was so clean,that you could almost think it was still a hospital! Our room had a balcony overlooking the estuary and cooling sea breezes flowed through the open courtyard. After a long, detailed introduction to the town from the well meaning but slightly over anxious owner, we headed out with his home-made map in the direction of Mandvi's most famous thali place- "Zorba the Buddha". Don't ask us about the name, all we can say is that the food was excellent, one of the best Gujarati thalis of the trip, with around 20 different tasty items. We refreshed ourselves with a paan, which is great for digestion, but also an excellent way to pass the time if it starts pouring rain and the streets suddenly flood.

Once the rains stopped, we headed back to the riverside to explore the boat building. The name Dhow is used in India to describe a type of wooden boat originally used by Arab merchants to carry goods between the  Arabian peninsula and India.  Historically they had up to three lateen sails, but now the boats built in Mandvi all use motors. As work was already finished for the day, we had a chance to roam around the site and even to go inside some of the boats. The area looked like a massive lumber yard, with enormous beams lying in piles surrounding the boats.  Walking along the river you could see how the boats were made, from the rough skeleton to the final finishing, sanding and tarring.  Some of these ships towered to a height of a three-storey building, and climbing on their rickety bamboo ladders and scaffolding was a heart-stopping experience.  It was worth it, however, as from the height of the deck of one of these finished giants, you could see the entire shipyard and all the way out to the open sea in the other direction.
 

The next morning we came back when work was in progress and were able to find out more about the building process from some of the workers, who are still predominantly Muslim.  Apparently, all boats start with a drawing made by an "architect", although none of them look like they do. The skeleton and ribs are made of naturally curving tree trunks, helped into the right form by the workers. Then the hull is constructed around the skeleton, with planks and beams made of Malaysian-imported wood of up to 15-20 meters in length. The workers were hardly using any heavy machinery - most of the work of shaping and fitting was done with little adzes and hand-held drills of type one might use at home to hang an IKEA shelf on the wall. The planks were first individually hand fit into the right place and then attached to the skeleton by means of meter-long screws.

While the work was in progress on the boats it looked like complete chaos, with jumbles of wood and bolts sticking out at odd angles, large groups of men hanging around "supervising" the one or two who were actually doing something and bus-length tree trunks being transported on flimsy looking handcarts. Once finished, however, the boats were sleek and perfectly symmetrical, worthy of braving the strongest storms of the Arabian sea. It is an amazing feat of craftsmanship - being able to construct such huge vessels with predominantly medieval techniques in the early 21st century, and still be in Business. Apparently, what was once a dying art has turned into a booming industry in the last ten years, and it looks like once again, the little port town of Mandvi is going to be on the map of commerce.

Most of these boats are pre-ordered by wealthy people in the gulf states.  It takes a team of 40 builders   about two years to complete one of these bigger boats, which would be able to carry up to150,000 tons.  Actually, this doesn't really mean much to us, as we have difficulty visualizing 150,000 tons of anything, but let's just say that when we moved to Montreal, the entire contents of our house and workshop inside the container were around 8 tons.  Once the wooden structure is finished, the boat is then towed across the ocean to its buyer, where it is them fitted with its engine(s) and electricity - apparently this is much cheaper to do abroad than in India. By now, the price of a boat is the question that must be on your minds.  Well, let's say that instead of buying a house in Montreal we could probably have afforded one of these babies... but then it would probably not have a motor, and we'd be stuck living is the (not very nice smelling) estuary in Mandvi.

Barfi: One of the things that was very difficult for us was the fact that a lot of tribal peoples don't particularly like to have their photos taken. On the other hand, nor do they try to take yours discretely (or not so discretely) with  their mobile phones. The bull in this photo also took offense to having his photo taken, calmly  walked up to Boaz and head butted him afterwards so that he would get the hint.