Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein Continue reading
I’ve grown addicted to my colleague Anitha’s cold coffee since I got here (sorry guys but hers is just perfection). Ice cold, 70% arabica/30% robusta, locally grown coffee. India may not be known for its coffee, but in the Western Ghats of Southern India, you’ll find coffee plantations on hills and misty mountains between 800m and 1500m above sea level. One of the challenges here has been to integrate biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihoods for farmers. Continue reading
The forest canopy of the Periyar Tiger Reserve is rich in fruit all year round and bats feel very much at home. Out of the 119 species of bats found in India, 28 occur in Kerala. As many as six species of bat have been recorded in the Periyar : the flying fox, the shortnosed fruit bat, the Great-Eastern horse-shoe bat, the Tickell’s bat, the Common yellow bat, and the Painted bat.
Bats usually roost in camps in the bamboo across the road from Cardamom County, hanging upside down all day and feeding on the abundant fruit in the area after sunset. However when I sighted this wide cloud of bats around midday on the rooftop of the restaurant, it got me wondering : what disturbed them during the day ? Continue reading
The most popular activity in the Periyar Tiger reserve is boating on the Periyar river. It’s a lazy, indulgent, moment of enjoyment of sightseeing. The ancient sunken tree trunks, the depth of the woods, the indigenous population fishing along the river…it also offers good chances to sight animals drinking, hunting by the river and excellent opportunities for birdwatching.
During the cruise I kept thinking it could all be quieter though, the engines of the motor boats seemed to break with the pristine tranquillity of this place… Continue reading
Back in 1912, french millionaire Albert Kahn hired Stéphane Passet to be a photographer for the monumental project Archives of the planet, an iconographic memory of societies, environments and lifestyles around the world. From 1909 to 1931, Albert Kahn commissioned photographers and film cameramen to record life in over 50 countries. The Archives of the planet were a collection of 180,000 metres of b/w film and more than 72,000 autochrome plates, most of which are held at Museum Albert Kahn in Boulogne, close to Paris.
Autochrome was the first industrial process for true colour photography. When the Lumière brothers launched it commercially in June 1907, it was a photograhic revolution – black and white came to life in colour. Autochromes consist of fine layers of microscopic grains of potato starch – dyed either red-orange, green or violet blue – combined with black carbon particles, spread over a glass plate where it is combined with a black and white photographic emulsion. All colours can be reproduced from three primary colours. Some of the autochrome pictures available today are however unidentified, some happen to be of Bombay. Who among you in the Raxa Collective community can help locate these sites?
When I arrived at Cardamom County a month ago, I was welcomed by bright lights and loud music : April 23rd is Saint-Georges’s day…Saint-George is one of the most venerated figure in the Christian faith, and Saint-George Orthodox church happens to be a stone’s throw away.
Saint-George Orthodox church in Thekkady
Short electricity cuts punctuate the day here in Kerala. As if to remind us, for a few seconds in our daily life, that the electricity fairy can play hard to get. Generators always kick in in an instant though, and that is it. Elsewhere, in Guinea for instance, generators are not there to save the day.
Only about a fifth of Guinea’s people have access to electricity. With few families able to afford generators, school children have had to get creative to find a place to read, do their homework and study for exams. So every day during exam season, as the sun sets over Conakry, hundreds of children begin a nightly pilgrimage to the G’bessia International Airport, to petrol stations and parks in wealthier areas of the city, searching for light.
My friends and I had been looking for one around town for an aftenoon, and finally I found it a week later driving away towards another town: a coir mat, the ideal support to make my salutations to the sun on. The small motorbike was actually part of a ‘caravan’ carrying people and mats from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. So loaded it was uncanny, this one had either the most efficient engine or the best pilot because it made it to the top of the hill first and stopped there to wait for the others. Continue reading
This morning’s post about the Smithsonian Ocean Portal featuring one of Chris Jordan‘s pictures from his exhibit Midway reminded me to check on his current work on the atoll. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of albatrosses lie on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Returning to the island over several years, Chris Jordan and his team witness the cycles of life and death of these birds. He will release in late 2013, his first documentary feature Midway, message from the gyre.
See the trailer after the jump. Continue reading
My colleague Vinod is an expert on sustainable tourism in India, he has studied the alternatives to plastics. He explained to me that after Brazil, India is the largest producer of bananas in the world… Continue reading
The pavement is being rebuilt on the street leading to ‘downtown’ Thekkady. Right now it looks like in many other Indian cities, which is apparently like a constant work in progress according to this article by N N Sachitanand in the New Indian Express:
Once upon a time, roadside pavements were meant for the use of pedestrians so that they could safely traverse the length of the road without being knocked down by traffic. That is why the Americans (as in the US of A) call them sidewalks. Indians have adopted and adapted to this Western concept to suit their own environment and, in the process, mangled its original purpose beyond recognition.
…or an extreme-gardening experimentation : Continue reading
I am from Europe where since the Roman conquest forest and civilization were perceived as antagonistic. Silva, the forest, was wild and needed to be tamed, and ager, the man-made open space was culture. So when Western countries debate of reducing deforestation and planting trees to offset carbon emissions, you can bet they mean elsewhere.
We have shops where you can buy a wooden chair but in exchange you pay for a carbon offsetting voucher which will allow for trees to be planted somewhere. That’s the thinking behind the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows a country with an emission-reduction or emission-limitation commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to implement an emission-reduction project in developing countries. Director Amy Miller went around the world to meet the communities where some of those offsetting projects were implanted. See the trailer after the jump.
This seminal talk from 2006 by Majora Carter, founder of the Majora Carter Group, introduced me to entrepreneurial conservation. So you can say it kind of led me here.
It is unfortunate how the reputation of a neighbourhood may reflect on its inhabitants. In french the silly expression “C’est le Bronx” refers to a messy room. People from the Bronx, Majora Carter included, decided to change this image. In fact, they decided to reclaim their rivers, their air, their land while creating jobs, leisure activities for local families, a safer gentler environment for children to grow up in.
It’s a story I’d like to hear about in many neighbourhoods around the world.
Fire. That’s what comes to my mind when I think of Indian food. I understand from my colleagues that here in Kerala food can never be too spicy. Don’t get me wrong– I love spicy food. I am less keen on surprises. But how to make sure to avoid them ? Continue reading
Tea in India tastes stronger, so I always ask for mine to be mild, just like I do for curry. As I learnt today during a visit at a tea plantation and factory this is due to the processing of tea mostly used here for the Indian market: CTC. Continue reading
Thekkady sits right next to the frontier between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. But once you cross the Western Ghats it’s like setting foot in a whole other country. The alphabet is different, the language is not malayalam but tamil. And the temperature is much hotter than in the hill stations, thus flora and fauna are radically different too. I mean it’s quite a shock, I’ve never felt this otherness when crossing a border in Europe. Tamil Nadu counts 72 million souls and tamil has been used for 3800 years so naturally the country has a distinct identity. Continue reading
Traveling in a pack, or you might say a group, is not something I do on holidays. I’m a lone wolf kind of traveler. See what I mean? Then I took the opportunity to escort a group coming to Cardamom County for a bird photography workshop into Periyar Tiger Reserve, and all my preconceptions disappeared. Although my companions came from all parts of India to take wildlife pictures and I arrived on day 1 with just an iphone, I quickly felt like I belonged. Continue reading
Ayurveda, India’s traditional medicine is a major presence in healthcare in Kerala. My colleague Lissi has ten years of experience practicing ayurvedic massage. She started her training at an ayurvedic hospital before enrolling at an ayurvedic institute. There, she pursued her apprenticeship while practicing at the hospital. Continue reading
To make a beautiful “uruli”, a traditional Kerala bowl filled with water and flowers, you need a keen eye. Picking the right flowers, drying them if it rained, placing them artfully, it is a craft. Continue reading
Cardamom County is located at the junction of Kumily and Thekkady and for me it is not quite clear yet where one starts and the other stops. Walking around Kumily in the early morning is a privileged moment to witness daily wonders. Continue reading
Organikos 