Kasper Sabbatical: Silk Worms and Time off

We took a week the end of Mar and 1st part of April and flew to Bangalore with the Wood's and the Nielson's serving in Vishakhapatnam. The first night we stayed in Bangalore's Shanti Hotel and had family Home Evening with The Mill's (From Sri Lanka) and The Linton's and the Fairbank's. We really enjoyed their company. It was in honor or Elder & Sister Mill's birthday April 5 and 6th and them going home shortly. This picture was taken the next morning on the way out of the city. We had a great driver and tour guide. His name was Saravann and he stayed with us the entire trip. We had a van and the luggage went on top. The 6 of us and Saravann.

Our first stop was at a silkworm market.

Here you see them unloading the truck.

Gunny sacks filled with silkworm cocoons.

Every day the weavers come to these markets to buy silkworms so they can make the thread and weave the finest of silks. India is 2nd largest producer of silk.

These little pods each have a worm that lives in them.

The pod is a cocoon. The silkworm weaves the cocoon around itself. The tiny thread that you see will be soaked in water so it comes off easier. It comes off in one long thread.

Saravann showing us the silkworm cocoon.

It was hard to tell the buyers from the sellers. I think most of these are the sellers!! There are many rooms in this open market building and table after table filled with the cocoons. All these shown will be sold today and new ones brought in tomorrow. This happens everyday.

These are white silkworms. The others (above) were yellow. White is more expensive and harder to come by. White ones can be dyed any color and yellows cannot.

Saravann told us the people who sell silkworms are very rich but they like their simple life.

This is one of the tables of cocoons up close.

You can see in this one that the table is deap and long....One of the hundreds of tables. It's hard to believe they will sell out everyday!! But they told us that is true.

We visited the home of those who take care of the worms. This is the process. When the butterfly emerges from the cocoon it lays eggs. The people gather the eggs and start the process over again. They are very careful not to let germs into the area. It's unusual for them to let people in to where the worms are. Our driver told us we were very fortunate.

You can see this is a big bed of worms. They are mixed in with Mulberry leaves. It evidently makes a difference what leaves they feed on too. There were 3 stacks of big beds surrounded by netting to keep the flies and other insects out. They are very protected.

Upclose shot of the worms. This family had a nice sized building. The worms were on one side of the building and there home on the other side. When you walk in their home they lived on one side and their was a stable for the animals on the other side.