Road To Mysore

Yesterday, Shobha took Simon, Vincent and I to the sandal wood and silk factory. I was really interested in the sandal wood factory because I wanted to get some sandal wood oil to mix with my regular massage oil. Sandal wood oil is one of my favorite scents but a small bottle of that in the US is about $35 so I rarely use it. Anyway, Shobha has been so eager to take us to the factory so we left Gokulam around 10AM.

Our first stop was the sandal wood factory. Shobha proudly knew the person in-charge of the factory. He is originally from Coorg and is a personal friend of Shobha. I was happy she was well connected because he personally gave us a tour of the factory. I've always enjoyed touring factories and seeing how everything is made. We had a blow by blow tour on how the oil is extracted from the wood. It was very interesting and I learned the following facts:

1. The sandalwood tree has to be at least 50 years old before it can be harvested. The older the tree, the better the yield. The roots has the most oil content so the tree has to be dug out at least 6 feet deep. The whole tree is used.

2. India has the best quality sandalwood tree(there was a lot of pride in his face when he told us that) with a 90% yeild compared to those from other countries which only has a 20% yeild. Karnataka has the best sandal wood trees in India(Mysore is in Karnataka).

3. I think he said that India is the only country that produces sandal wood oil but they receive sandal wood trees from Australia, Africa and some other countries.

4. There are about 10 sandal wood factories in India, all run and managed by the government. They are very protective with the sandal wood oil that an individual can only buy a maximum of 3 bottles of oil. When I leave for the US, I will have to present the bill to the custom agent or they may take the oil away from me.

5. Sandal wood is a parasite tree and needs to grow beside another tree where it gets there nutrients.

6. The wood is first cut into small pieces and then powdered. It is then placed in large metal containers which have capacity of 2 tons. The oil is extracted by applying steam on the wood. The vapors go up the tubes and is cooled in large water containers. The oil just floats on the water and is transfered to large bins. It then goes into a filtering system. One 5 gram bottle of sandal wood oil cost 450 ruppees(about $10).

The tour ended in the factory store where I did some major shopping. I only got one 10 gram bottle of oil because I wanted to try it out first. Shobha told us that we can always come back to get more. I bought a lot of soaps and incense to give away when I go home.

Our next stop was the silk factory. Since all of us were men, we were mostly interested in the process and not the silk itself. None of us was really interested in buying material for a sari. Our tour in the silk factory was the complete opposite of the earlier tour. Shobha registered us in the gate and then we were allowed to go in the factory. We had no tour guide so we just walked around the factory like we owned it. I think the workers are used to people going into the factory because they just ignored us while we watched them work. I was hoping to see some silk worms but the factory recieved bundles of threads in the raw form. The whole silk worm process is all done in the farms. Anyway, we saw them process the silk threads, weave the silk, dye the silk and dry them up. The whole process was interesting but the weaving machines where very loud. We could hardly hear ourselves. I told Simon that it felt weird walking around the factory because it seemed like we could walk into any room without being stopped. Just when I finished my sentence, we were about to enter another room and the security guard told us that the room was restricted. That was the end of the tour so we went to the display room to check out the silk. None of us really cared about actually buying silk because it was really expensive. Since I was already there, I decided to buy some slightly damaged white silk material and had a shirt made.