One morning we all ventured out to a village several miles away. We were to have a meeting there with the village leaders and the meeting had been set up by the academics. It was politically motivated for the most part. We had to leave the Land Rovers and walk the last mile to the village because the path was so rough. Suddenly we came around a bend and the path came out on to a vast open plain, miles long and miles across and stretching to the foothills of the Himalaya. It was stunningly beautiful.
To our right I could see a few women bending low from the hips and planting rice in a rice paddy filled with water that was one of thousands of paddies extending as far as the eye could see. I walked over where the women were planting. They began to laugh when they saw me kick off my sandals, put my Nikons down on top of a low dike and wade into the paddy. I asked the woman closest to show me how to plant the rice seedlings.
Photo shows the dikes that have to be repaired every season. Water flows by gravity into the paddies from an irrigation ditch. The buffalo pull a "smoothing board" which is just a longplank pulled horizontally to the hitch. The teamster stands on it to add weight and smooths out the contour on the bottom of the paddy as the water enters and fills the paddy. Then it is ready for planting the rice seedlings.
This is a photo taken in another location that shows a farmer preparing a field for the rice rotation. Old rice plants have been cut down and stacked at the bottom of the photo and the farmer is plowing the soil, turning it over, and turning under the organic material, the plants on the surface. After it's turned it's "lumpy" and will only be ready for planting the rice after it's wet and been smoothed down.
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