The India Tent - putting it up

Some years back, and I'll need to check the details, my parents were in India and fell in love with the tent they were staying in somewhere. It was similar to the tents they stayed in while on safari in Africa somewhere. (Clearly, I'm not quite up to speed on the details.) Anyway, they loved it, ordered one, and it duly turned up some months later. It was only missing one part, a fiendishly complicated joint which a friend managed to construct for us (yay Simon!).

It takes about seven man-hours to go from this:

Step 1: Sweep the plinth, and spray for earwigs

to this:

Interior, unfurnished tent

Now, it's not this:

Tent of Carlos V, source: http://www.greydragon.org/pavilions/Spain/carlos-v16.jpg

but it's not too shabby.

After the jump, you can see how the tent is assembled.

The tent arrives on the back of the tonka truck

The walls of the main room go up first.

The heavy fabric is suspended by a series of cotton ties (about 8" apart) that have to be hand-tied

A pain in the arse to assemble in anything more than a light breeze

Right, so that's the first part up - the side and back walls of the main room.

The ties that bind. (It's velcro that binds it to the uprights.)

Next up, the walls for the back section, and then the front

And then the ceiling. We put the ceiling up along the centreline (too hard to do after the roof is on)

And then we put the roof on over the whole lot. That was bloody hard work (not least because the wind had picked up) and I couldn't stop partway through to take any photos.

Once the roof was tied on around the edges, the sides and gable ends of the ceiling were attached.

Lots and lots and lots of bows at awkward angles and heights.

(I think that's me peering through the corner.)

Finally, we put up the ceiling for the verandah, but we couldn't be arsed putting up the one for the rear anteroom, nor the decorative undereave for the verandah.

I didn't get many photos of the completed tent - we were a bit over it, and in need of a restorative beverage by then. We're back up at the farm in a fortnight (and will probably need to help bring it down again) so I'll try to get some more pics then.