On the outskirts of Chennai there is a stretch of land used for salt-making. The salt is extracted from "evaporation ponds" like those shown below. There were some crude pumps here and there, leading me to believe that's how the saline water is pulled up from the ground. Workers then spread the saline around for evaporation and rake the salt into piles. Hundreds of these ponds could be seen from the road, each with a growing mound of salt. Some of the piles were mountain-size, like the one I'm standing in front of.
Basia in front of a salt mountain
A historical side note: One of the well-known campaigns of civil disobedience launched by Gandhi had to do with salt. In the 1930s, Britain had a monopoly on the manufacture of salt in India. British "Salt Laws" decreed that "the sale or production of salt by anyone but the British government was a criminal offense punishable by law." This meant that farmers, who could easily extract salt themselves from their land, were forced instead to pay the British for salt for their own use. During the Salt March, a 240 mile, 23-day walk in protest of the salt laws, Gandhi made this issue the focus of his civil disobedience campaign (and was subsequently arrested for it).
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Posted by: DonnaK | Monday, March 22, 2004 at 11:21 PM