Indian Headwear

Whilst in India, I was struck by the different forms of headwear worn in daily life.  I especially loved the turbans, which are 25 yard long strips of cloth.  Can you imagine how heavy that must be?

I was told that the colour of the turban indicates profession and its style of wrapping, the area the wearer comes from.  However, that may just have been a miscommunication.  Whatever the reason, I was really entranced by the men with these colourful head wraps.

Away from the fancy turbans, men still covered their heads in a multitude of ways.  The man with the blue shawl was clearly feeling the cold on that day (weren't we all!).

The camel driver looked as though his cap was knitted with camel hair!

We loved this guy and his fake fur hat.  I stalked him trying to get a photo.  Later we spotted a few other men wearing them.  Maybe they were at the cutting edge of fashion in Rajasthan!

The women often had their heads covered too.  The trip we undertook told me one thing, red is by far the most popular colour you see anywhere. 

Can you imagine that these elegant women are the cleaners at one of the palaces that we visited?  Like a lot of women, they pulled their saris up over their heads. I also saw women using their saris to cover their faces, to protect against the wind and dust.

Even this woman, who was digging in the grounds of a fort, had her head draped with a lovely shawl.  

Sadly I was never able to quite catch the picture that I had been hoping to get close up, so I cropped this.  I was desperate to get a man in a turban with a huge moustache.  This wasn't the biggest one we saw by far.

Of all the headwear we saw, nothing was as special as a live monkey clamped to your noggin.  Now that isn't something you don't see every day!