Pippa’s Travel Diary: India & Bhutan 2025
Twice a year my children and I make a pilgrimage to Rajasthan in northern India. The twins have been accompanying me there since they were six months old. Our home in Jaipur is a perfect, small, buttercup yellow palace hotel set in a verdant garden full of trees that hosts a pair of hornbills as well as monkeys, peacocks, hoopoes, and curious Indian squirrels.
I go to India to work with the goldsmiths and stonecutters that I have known for nearly 30 years – to create seasonal collections to present in New York and Paris at fashion weeks in the spring and autumn. For weeks before I travel, I start to gather ideas: words, concepts, unusual pieces of chain, shells, pebbles, bits of jewellery from around the world, photographs and books. I start sketching ideas and forming a sense of colours and materials of what the new collections will be. Sometimes this will change while I am sitting in the workshops or sifting through gems from the stone markets of Jaipur, but usually the base is set, and we grow and cultivate the ideas in situ. I love catching up with the people I work with, hearing family news, a marriage, a new baby, but also long political discussions on the state of the world. We share, we talk, we navigate and negotiate, we laugh, and we create.
Jaipur has become a very busy, dynamic, and noisy city. At the weekends there is nothing nicer than escaping to the countryside for peace, for a glimpse at another India in the rural farming villages where life is very different. The twins and I walk to a village, sit and chat, have a chai and visit the farms and animals. We get a small sense of what life is like, the challenges and the joys. Seeing how village women wear their jewellery is also interesting and gives inspiration. Heavily adorned even while tending the goats or weeding the fields: really showing the value of jewellery beyond the spectacle and into the sphere of the cosmos, of protective gems, gods, and colours.
This season, there is a feeling of a need for lightness, especially in these heavy times. The gems I chose to work with – lemon, green, and rose quartz – are translucent stones with a limpid and joyful quality as well as an earthly grounding to them. We experimented with different cuts and found a wonderful way of giving new life to a tumbled pebble by creating uneven facets on the different planes; this gives the stone a gentle sparkle – a very satisfying result that is both ancient and modern in feel. We are also working with more playful cuts of spirals and twists with the gems.
In April I had decided to finally take the leap to travel to Bhutan, which I have dreamt of doing for many years. Since Covid, I notice in myself a great reluctance to postpone; there is a feeling of leaping at opportunities that I may have previously delayed. Bhutan has held my fascination for years and I was very keen to show the twins another way of being in the world – an immense thank you to Wild Frontiers who facilitated this trip. After a year of distressing global news, as the world descended into wars, and greed was hailed as a hero, I felt an urgency to show them that there are alternatives.
Bhutan is a small Himalayan kingdom. Flying from the world’s most populated country to one with well under a million inhabitants was a balm. Bhutan is making a very concerted effort to keep its unique culture both alive and dynamic. There is a strong sense of a collective will in wearing the traditional dress: the woven Kira wrap skirt and silk jacket for women, and the Gho for men – a knee-length, belted robe. Even the new apartment buildings in Thimphu were painted with all the auspicious symbols: the dragons and deer, the snow leopard and garuda; the windows are decorated with carved and painted wood. There is a sense that beauty is important for people’s wellbeing, there is no rubbish strewn along the roadside, no billboards or traffic lights. There is a sense of well-being, peace, and the Buddhist teachings of treating all sentient beings with respect is clear in the countryside where rivers run clean and clear. The air is pure and stars are bright at night.
We visited ancient monasteries, walked high in the mountains through forests and along rivers, and visited vegetable markets and farms. My children had the privilege to walk in a country that is safe, clean, and beautiful; where a Buddhist philosophy teaches that anger, hatred, greed, and jealousy are to be avoided. The mountains allowed our souls to soar and the forests gave us joy. As we attended festivals and wandered through towns and villages, I was fascinated by the ropes of coral and turquoise, the agate Dhzi beads worn by the women, the gold and turquoise earrings and rings. Fingers ran through wood or stone prayer beads. Men and women gathered to examine my rings and bracelets while I studied theirs. Once again, the universality of the appeal, need, and appreciation for adornment. There is something calm, thoughtful and intentional about mountain people all over the world. Life is hard, but there is something about being on top of the world that gives a gravitas and added dignity to life.
