Walking by a rivulet in a rainforest

The cold is well and truly here in Sydney and winter has officially begun, which is why I am looking back at pictures of wonderful weather and of wearing bare minimum clothing. Here are some photos of our road-trip during a long weekend, leisurely exploring national parks, walking by rivulets, looking for waterfalls, drinking chilled beer and wearing block print wisps as swimsuit cover-ups.

Can you tell I don't do winters well? Ah well! Planning our next sojurn to the city of lights will have to keep my mind busy and away from the thoughts of puffer jackets and thermal underwear!

Let's talk about the saree

It is no secret that I love hand-crafted clothes in natural fabrics preferably sourced ethically. What is also no secret is my love for traditional Indian clothing worn in ways that feel good to me. Sometimes that means wearing long kurtas featuring high slits with denim shorts, sometimes it means wearing gaghras with sweatshirts or sometimes it means wearing a kediyu (that pre-pubescent girls from the Bharvad tribe in Gujarat wear) with a lovely hand-loomed cotton gamchaa saree wrapped around a denim mini.

I literally cannot say or write enough about my love for a simple cotton saree and would pick cottons over most other (natural fabric) sarees any day of the week. I wear them everywhere from work to the pub while travelling or hiking or just chilling at home. In fact I am so obsessed with sarees and documenting saree wearing feminists that I have even started a whole new blog just focussed on sarees. These photos were taken for a post on that blog but the saree and the kediyu are so pretty that we got a lot of good pictures and I decided to use some of them here. If you are curious about the various aspect of this particular outfit or want to know about sarees, are a newbie trying to incorporate more sarees into your daily wear or just someone that likes to look at colourful photos taken in Sydney and elsewhere please free to check us out on Pleats N Pallu blog or instagram.

Cascades among mossy green rocks

This is a vintage men's angrakha or jama (I am not sure of the historically appropriate term) that I am wearing as a dress on an expedition to yet another waterfall.

The fabric feels like handloom-ed cotton, is definitely hand-blockprinted and is a flouncy dream of an outfit. The sleeves are too big and too long but that has never stopped me from enjoying an item of clothing. I love the fact that a lot of historical Indian costumes look gender neutral and they give me hope that one day we will evolve beyond this gender-based existence.