For three decades, Bernadette O’Farrell brought the colours, textures and quiet magic of India to Henley‑on‑Thames. From her shop, The Indian Garden Company tucked down a little alleyway off Hart Street, she curated a world of hand‑embroidered textiles, carved wooden furniture, and artisan craft.

Her work travelled far beyond Henley. Bernadette exhibited at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, supplied collections to Bergdorf Goodman in New York, collaborated with The White Company, and worked with Burford Garden Company, always championing the skill and soul of Indian craftsmanship.

Now, the journey has come full circle. After thirty years of bringing India home to Henley, Bernadette is taking Henley to India. Through her textile and cultural journeys, she is inviting people to experience the country that shaped her, not as tourists, but as guests welcomed into workshops, markets, homes and heritage that most travellers never see.

Utterly captivated by her story we asked Bernadette to tell it herself…

The first time I landed in India I had no idea what to expect. I arrived in Bombay, as it was known then, nearly thirty-five years ago. The heat came for me first, wrapping itself around me before I had reached the bottom of the aircraft steps. Then the smell. I have never been able to describe it, a mixture of monsoon rain, salt air, sun and earth and flowers. When I open my bags at home in England the smell is still there, and my daughter lifts a dress to her face and says it smells of India.

It was late at night when I left the terminal. The first thing I saw outside was a long yellow rail, a metal barricade directly outside the doors. Behind it, a sea of people: dense, thrusting, hands reaching out, placards held high, thin vests, sweat and noise. The noise above all. I had never heard anything like it. Beyond them, rows of yellow-roofed black taxis, every one of them sounding its horn. I was hooked.

I have arrived in India more times than I can count and every time there is so much to see. Vehicles move like a school of fish, weaving inches apart without ever quite colliding. Whole families balanced on a single motorcycle. Tuk-tuks threading through the traffic. Chai wallahs boiling their brass kettles. Men ambling down dusty streets past women draped in vibrant colours, all of it moving through a haze of diesel and frying spices, incense drifting from roadside shrines, the occasional clatter of a horse-drawn cart or a cow navigating the traffic entirely unbothered.

I drink all of it down. I always have.

I went there in the first place because I was in love with an Indian man and he was showing me his home. I kept returning for the textiles. The fascination for the craftsmanship started in those first years: the embroidery, the handwoven cloth, the silks and cottons, the hand-blocking, the indigos and hot pinks and oranges. I had never seen anything like it.

In those early years we worked with workshops making parasols and textiles. As the business grew, so did the orders, and gradually production moved into larger, more industrialised units. They were still family-run businesses, and I knew the owners well, but I realised I was moving further away from the people whose skill had first fascinated me.

Finding the artisans wasn’t easy then. The internet was in its infancy. It meant asking questions, following recommendations, driving to remote villages, knocking on doors and relying on one introduction leading to another. Slowly, I found the printers, weavers and embroiderers working in small family workshops, many using techniques that had changed little in a hundred years.

That was the beginning of what has become a lifelong obsession. Today it is those artisans, and the extraordinary knowledge, that I most want people to experience.

For years I ran The Indian Garden Company from a shop on Hart Street, down an alleyway from the street, office upstairs, shop below. People still stop me to talk about it: the garden tents, the decorative umbrellas, the lanterns, the scarves, the throws. It was really a shop full of India. We exhibited at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for ten years, and the work travelled further than I ever expected, to Bergdorf Goodman in New York, to The White Company, to Burford Garden Company.

Twice a year, sometimes more, I flew out on buying and sourcing trips. There were long drives through rural Rajasthan and north India, workshops down unmarked lanes, hours spent drinking sweet chai. In India nothing of value moves without trust, and trust cannot be bought or hurried. It is built the slow way, by turning up, by paying fairly, by coming back. After three decades those working relationships have turned into friendships.

I no longer source, but I share what I know with buyers, designers, textile enthusiasts and travellers who want to meet the artisans, understand the place, and travel through India at a slower pace.

Rajasthan is one of the great cultural landscapes of the world, and the palaces and forts alone would justify the flight. Painted walls, mirrors set into walls and ceilings, stone inlaid with coloured glass, carving on a scale that is spellbinding.

When I first went to Jaipur it was a quieter desert outpost, where the walled city dictated daily life and the outer edges faded into fields. White Ambassador cars with white cotton seats and curtained back windows cruising past walls of soft, lime-based terracotta. Camel carts on the avenues. Gemstone cutters and block printers worked out of quiet multi-generational workshops, supplying local markets, many of them sitting openly on the main verandas.

Now international designers have opened beautiful stores in restored buildings, cafés have appeared, and the city draws creative people from around the world. The artisans have moved into the hidden lanes behind the city. Yet somehow it still feels unmistakably Jaipur.

I do not want to romanticise it. India has poverty, bureaucracy, tension, noise. It is not perfect. But show me somewhere that is. It is impossible to be bored there. I think it may be the most interesting place on earth.

The Rajasthan most visitors see is a coach window, a fort by ten, a palace by two. My Rajasthan tours start with the people. In the printing villages of Bagru and Sanganer we stand at the tables where cloth has been blocked by hand for generations. In Pipar we visit printers still working with natural dyes and hand-cut blocks. In Jaipur we call on master jewellers and stone dealers I have known for fifteen years and more. In Chandelao we stay in a beautiful heritage haveli and spend time with the local villagers, watching them embroider. In Bundi, a town few travellers reach, palace murals normally closed to the public are opened to us because of long friendship. None of it can be booked online. That is rather the point.

These journeys are not only for textile enthusiasts. Some travellers come for the palaces and the gardens, some for the food, and some for the shopping, a subject on which I am dangerously well informed. India is one of the finest places in the world to shop, and after decades of sourcing I know the best places to go. The journeys are built around the group. For those who want more time with the artisans, we go deeper. For those who would rather have another hour in a palace garden, or a quiet swim before dinner, that is also accommodated.

Before India, and for a long time alongside it, I made television. I started as a researcher, became an assistant commissioning editor in entertainment, then deputy commissioning editor in documentaries at Channel 4, and later worked as an independent documentary producer. Filmmaking teaches you one thing above all, which is balance. When to hold a moment and when to move on. How much intensity an audience can take before they need light, or quiet, or laughter. I build these journeys the way I would build a film. A morning of colour and noise in a bazaar is followed by a slow afternoon in a garden. A day in the workshops is followed by a day among palaces, or a day of nothing much at all. India can overwhelm anyone. The edit is everything. Time to rest and reflect is a necessary part of the itinerary.

Where we stay matters. Not uniform luxury chains but heritage havelis and small privately owned hotels, some in the hands of designers and collectors, many of them family homes restored with real care, with frescoed courtyards, gardens and beautiful pools. These are places I have stayed myself and go back to time and time again. I would not take anyone somewhere I do not love.

Some people fear India. Too big, too intense, too much. I understand it, and I will not pretend the country organises itself for your convenience. But I know how to navigate it. The group is small. The pace is gentle. More than anything, I hope people leave seeing India differently. Not simply remembering palaces or photographs, but remembering the people who wove the cloth, the conversations over cups of chai and the lives behind the workshops. Once you begin to look in that way, India becomes an endlessly fascinating place.

After one trip a traveller said to me, “You showed me an India no one has ever shown me before.” I cannot think of a better description of what I am trying to do.

There is a symmetry in all this that pleases me. For thirty years I brought India home to Henley, through a shop on Hart Street and a stand at Chelsea. Now I am taking Henley to India. I am excited to show people the country that got under my skin on a hot night in Bombay all those years ago, and the people I have grown to love. I have stopped shipping the beautiful things back and started bringing travellers out to meet the makers themselves.

Bernadette O’Farrell leads small-group textile, heritage and culture journeys to Rajasthan, with departures in February and October 2027, and to Kutch in March and November 2027.

Contact hello@indiawithbernadette.com or visit India with Bernadette | Textile & Cultural Journeys