Being Local - 1


A young monk at Hemis Monastery who was shy enough to pose for a picture. Ultimately agreed to pose for a photo persuaded by his senior in the picture behind.

Since I have been travelling quite a lot and taking pictures of locals, I decided to start a series named 'Being Local', where I can post the different characters who I feel is interesting enough to have a mention.
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Nirmal - Home for Toy and Art Industry

Nirmal is situated in the Adilabad district of the newly formed state of Telengana.

It is merely 218 kms from Hyderabad and yet there are not many people who knows that Nirmal is famous for Toys and Paintings. Staying in Hyderabad for almost about 7 years now, I recently came to know the specialty and had started growing interest to visit the place - primarily to visit the Toys workshop.

Upon reaching there and talking to various people in the Hotel where we stayed, we came to know that there is a single store accompanied by the workshop. Read from a old Hindu article that after Independence when the artisans were undergoing a bad phase, Government came to their rescue and formed a society called The Nirmal Toys and Arts Industries Cooperative Society Ltd. in 1955.


Visitors come here to purchase but most of these toys are sold in different parts of the country and even exported abroad. This is a small scale industry which has high potential to be popularized. The toys are made up of a unique tender wood called 'Poniki Wood'. The price of the toys also seemed to be moderate enough.



Toys:










Paintings:





Small Video of the Workshop:


It is sad that the Government has not promoted this place for Tourism. If a single store can make a place famous, it definitely has a lot of potential which can be explored to make this into a large scale industry. There are also other attractions (mainly Waterfalls, sanctuaries, temples etc.) which can be centered from Nirmal.

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