Shanti, Krishna, Bikram, Me, Sujita & Kim at their house on our last night in Kathmandu.
Kim & I both looking very focused in the factory!
Wedding rings we made for each other. The stones are aquamarine.
This is Kim's masterpiece. A belt buckle made out of $100 worth of silver, coconut for the tree, crushed malachite and turquoise for the leaves and various stones for the flowers. He worked on this for over 3 weeks and the end result is amazing. Krishna was a very proud teacher the day he finished this!
Another pretty incredible piece that Kim worked on for a while. This bracelet's made out of coconut with silver inlay and surrounds. Like the belt buckle, a lot of silver was used to make this and it has a lot of weight to it.
These are money clips that Kim made. The two on the end are coconut with silver inlay and the ones in the middle are tiger's eye and turquoise.
This is my design. I call it the tri-ring! The stones i used are amythyst, iolite and tourmaline.
These are coconut earrings with silver inlay. The coconut we used for our pieces came from India. In Gokarna, a small beach where we stayed for a while, we found tons of coconuts and decided that, at some point in time, we'd like to use them to make jewelry. We spent hours sitting there on our beach blanket sanding them down!
These are two pendants that i made. The turquoise came from Krishna's personal collection and i feel extremely lucky that he shared them with me. We’re back in India now after a 4 month sojourn to Nepal, an incredible country that’s turned out to be a highlight of our trip so far! We were so busy our last two months in Kathmandu that it’s not until we’re back in Rishikesh – sitting on the same balcony that we sat on last year – that I find myself with the time to sit down and write.
In Kathmandu we spent our time at the factory with Krishna, our silversmith master and teacher extraordinaire, and his workers Binod and Shiva. Days would pass by so quickly, sitting at our desks on that street in Naya Bazaar, that we’d notice it getting dark outside and be like “it’s that time of day already”?! The days seriously passed us by as if in a vortex and the only break we’d take would be for lunch at Krishna’s house for dhal baht. The lunch time meal was prepared every day by Krishna’s wife Shanti who is arguably one of the best cooks in the world! Dahl baht is a meal eaten twice daily by all Nepali people and it consists of rice, dhal (lentil soup) and various vegetable dishes called takari. Dahl baht is eaten with your hand; the right one of course as the left is reserved for other business! It was our favorite meal of the day and we miss it!
Krishna and his family are, hands down, one of the nicest families we’ve ever met and they made our time in Kathmandu very special. They welcomed us into their home and treated us like family. They even threw a birthday party for me complete with cake and a cake fight! It was a really enjoyable evening and one that will stand out in my mind for many years to come.
During those two months spent at the factory we only took a couple of days off so we didn’t do a whole lot of sightseeing but we did get to know the neighborhood where Krishna lives and works quite well. Kim’s barber was just down the street where he’d go every second day for a shave that cost him less than 50 cents. We had three street dogs, Old Mate, Little Mate and Licks, that we bought a water bowl for and fed hard boiled eggs to in the mornings. We went to the same shop every evening for a beer and snacks and it was there that I learned my Nepali numbers! We bought mangos from the mango man every few days as he pushed his cart past the factory. But mostly we just sat at our desks thinking about designs and creating pieces like the ones you saw above. Our time in Kathmandu went by far too quickly and we're already planning when we'll go back. Krishna, Shanti, Bikram, Vicky, Sujita, Binod, Shiva, Old Mate, Little Mate and Licks, if any of you are reading this – we miss you!
