Marconi
Marconi is an original decedent of the Mongolian people (a Chinese state at the time) who were the creators of the “Chinese Fishing Nets” in Kerala, India. These structures are at least 30 ft high and the nets stretch out more than 50 ft across the water! It takes half a dozen people to even attempt to heave the nets which work on a pulley system with GIANT boulders hanging from the opposite side to counteract the weight. Continue reading
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Bheemeshwari, Karnataka
Soka Instructional Garden, photo courtesy of Nina Boutin
It has been a little over 4 months since I finished my internship, which has given me a lot of time to integrate and reflect on what I learned at Raxa Collective. I spent my first month in Thekkady at Cardamom County and my second month in Cochin at Spice Harbour. I am deeply grateful for this experience because it has informed my personal growth and career path in ways that are hard to articulate, but- I will try.
The month before coming to India, I walked part of the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage in Spain. If that wasn’t exhausting enough, I promptly went to India, and when I got to Raxa Collective, I hit the ground running, trying to figure out how I could best be of service and learn as much as possible. I expected for it to be difficult, but I didn’t know how it would be (though I was forewarned about the monkeys).
I’m working towards an environmental studies liberal arts degree at Soka University. A liberal arts degree is interdisciplinary, therefore I’m always looking for the intersection between things people think are separate. Profit and conservation are definitely things people usually think are separate.
I got to look deeply into the way those can intersect when I interviewed Crist about the path they have taken up until now. That interview has been so valuable for me in planning a business model that incorporates environmental and cultural conservation. Now, I think I want to start a restaurant that incorporates my passion for local food, biodiversity, sustainability, agriculture, and community. Continue reading
If you are like me, you enjoy the fresh air, green scenic views and appreciate a variety of cultures. Kuttanand, south of Cochin is a promising destination with its rich rice picking culture and its backwater systems. It also offers diverse species of animals, especially birds which can easily be spotted due to the open landscape.
Next on my Kerala bucket list!
(photo credits: Keralatourism.org)
Overlooking a local Chai plantation outside Thekkady
India for the most part is spread out as one can imagine due to sheer size. In Kerala, you have the Kochin Harbor slightly west of the Cochi airport, the Backwaters to the south and to the east you have the third major attraction, the Periyar Tiger Reserve. About a three hour drive outside Cochi, one begins to see the change from the metropolitan to the rural “farmer lifestyle” that is popular in Thekkady. Local farmers mainly specialize in Cardamom, coffee and Chai or tea. However, the most noticeable of these are the Chai plantations which add a striking green layered look to the mountains (especially in the dryer months).
Local woman carrying bundled up Chai
The road winds up, down and around these plantations, giving great perspective and unique photo opportunities around every corner. Historically, women are the ones who harvest the top layer of leaves from these bushes. The leaves are collected into sacks and then transported.
Cardamom County Hotel, located across the road from the tiger reserve offers very comfortable and affordable rooms and a great local Indian (specifically Keralan) cuisine. Continue reading
Thattekad Bird Sanctuary, Kerala
Illustration by Paul Sahre
We spent much of the first half of 2011 poring over dictionaries. Mostly Sanskrit to English dictionaries, but also Malayalam to English, and also just English dictionaries with the occasional thesaurus to inspire.
We thought a lot about a company that two of us had formed that had done a lot of projects relevant to, and some interestingly different from, the new enterprise that would re-brand the hospitality portfolio of a major business group based in Kerala, India. We recorded a few facts about that naming process at the time this blog went live. This article not only brings back memories of those days, weeks, months of name-pondering, but gets us thinking about the meaning of Raxa Collective now versus what we thought then:
The Weird Science of Naming New Products
By NEAL GABLER
To find the perfect brand, leave no word unturned.
We were on our first Sunday outing of the new year at Hebbal Lake in Bangalore. Towards the end of the birding session, we stopped to click pictures of a little Egret and an Intermediate Egret.
The Intermediate Egret was busy preening for a very long time. As we enjoyed watching it, there was one another interesting behaviour that I got to record – “Canopy feeding”. Continue reading
Ranganthittu, Karnataka
Wind turbines on the Danish island of Samso. Credit Erik Refner for The New York Times
College of the Atlantic, referenced in the story below, came to our attention once before, to very good effect. The wonderful Krulwich, who has been a mainstay of our onward links since the early days, got us to follow the College. And here it is again, in good light. Also, we knew that Danes creatively care about light, and had read about this island, but had not shared a story about the island until now:
Danish Ingenuity Fuels Green-Energy Ideas
Residents of islands off Maine’s coast seek to draw on the experiences of the Danish island Samso in an effort to explore alternative sources of light and heat.
Savory yogurt is one of this year’s top food trends. Photo credit: Blue Hill Yogurt / Facebook page
Thanks to EcoWatch for this note on trending foodways to watch this year:
On today’s Here & Now, host Jeremy Hobson talked with foodies Kathy Gunst, resident chef for Here & Now, and J.M. Hirsch, food editor for the Associated Press, about some of the trends in food for 2015.
Several trends that the guests identified include, savory yogurt, butter and full-fat dairy, mini vegetables and “new” whole grains such as freekeh, hemp, chia and spelt. Continue reading
Sunrise over Cochin Harbor
I flew into the Cochin airport in Kerala a few days ago for the first time. This is my first time to Asia and to a country whose language I do not speak (fluent in english and spanish). I was greeted by Udayan, one of Raxa Collective’s drivers who began driving me to the hotel. If you had read my last post, you would know that I am here to do an internship under Crist and Amie Inman (owners and operators of Raxa Collective), who I have been communicating with for months now. Amie especially, had warned me of the driving and how “In some parts of the world, people drive on the left side, others on the right side, but in India people drive everywhere”! That could not have been closer to the truth. As soon as we leave the airport parking lot, I hear horns going off, almost in symphony to one another, communicating back and forth. Tuk-tuks (a type of small yet quick 3 wheeler) are swerving in and out of traffic, motorcycles and cars zig-zagging in and out. The driver, completely calm and very good at what he does tells me that it will be a 45min drive. In my mind, I thought this wasn’t driving, but a type of noisy tetras.
John, Justin and I have been at the Windsor Research Center for a day and getting ready for our first five or six day trip through Cockpit Country. Every single Jamaican we’ve met so far has been super friendly and helpful. We won’t be able to update as much as we’d like but hopefully every week we can send out one quick post. If you don’t hear from us though, it’s likely just because there’s some wind hitting the leaves that are reflecting the signal that the antenna here picks up and plugs into the desktop they use at Windsor. Continue reading
The news that is fit to print, for better or worse as it impacts our mood and our sense of hope (or sense of doom on occasion), includes this review of the current best knowledge on marine ecosystems by one of our favorite science writers:
Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Study Says
Scientists find what they say are clear signs that humans are beginning to damage oceans on a catastrophic scale, but there is still time to preserve their ecological health.
I would like to take a quick moment to introduce myself, my goals for the next few months and what I will be posting in this blog. I am a recent graduate from the University of Central Florida, Rosen School of Hospitality Management and I was born in Costa Rica.
I am excited to be interning at Marari Pearl (Kerala, India) starting this January. I don’t believe there will be a lack of material for me to write about in Kerala with its unique culture, customs, spicy foods and amazing animals! This will be my first time to Asia and I am quite sure it will be a great and rewarding culture shock and I want to convey my observations and thoughts about something totally new to me. Continue reading
Daroji Bear Sanctuary, Karnataka
Yosemite climbers reach summit of El Capitan
News feeds–especially those that give attention to adventure, and extreme sports and rock climbing in particular–are full of this story just now about two friends accomplishing one of the greatest challenges left in the small specialty sport. We are not at all devoted to the sport, but in the last year or two have developed a fascination, based on another climber’s feats and travails, mainly because of the collaboration component of climbing.
© AP Photo/Tom Evans, elcapreport In this Jan. 8, 2015 photo provided by Tom Evans, Kevin Jorgeson celebrates his finishing the climb of Pitch 15 while two photographers shoot video and stills from above…
Today’s news brings the collaboration part back to the forefront, in this case not due to absolute requirement but due to friendship. It is touching, in that “feel good” sense related to hoping you would do the same thing in the circumstance described; but more than that, it is just awesome:
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — American rock climber Tommy Caldwell was first to pull himself atop a 3,000-foot sheer granite face in Yosemite National Park, followed minutes later by his longtime friend Kevin Jorgeson.
The pair embraced and then Jorgeson pumped his arm in the air and clapped his hands above his head. After years of practice, failed attempts and 19 grueling days scaling the vertical wall on El Capitan by their bloodied fingertips, the friends at last grasped success.
“That’s a deep, abiding, lifelong friendship, built over suffering on the wall together over six years,” said Caldwell’s mother, Terry, among some 200 people in the valley floor thousands of feet below who broke into cheers at the climbers’ historic feat Wednesday.
She said her son could have reached the top of the world’s largest granite monolith several days ago, but he waited for his friend to ensure they made it together. Continue reading
COURTESY ULHAS KASHALKAR. Kashalkar’s genius lies in his inventive yet rooted artistry. In a sweet, malleable voice, he channels an intellectual disposition into emotionally powerful renditions.
When we first discovered the magazine we knew we would come to count on it for stories of interest from time to time, and today we find such an occasion:
A Fine Balance
How Ulhas Kashalkar became one of the greatest musicians of our time
By Sumana Ramanan
ONE
MINUTES BEFORE THE LIGHTS DIMMED and the Hindustani vocalist Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar walked onto the stage at Mumbai’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, the eminent singers Ashwini Bhide-Deshpande and Padma Talwalkar took their seats in the front row. The vocalist and veteran critic Amarendra Dhaneshwar sat a few rows behind them. Other listeners looked around to see who else had come. Several younger singers were there as well: Noopur Kashid, Rutuja Lad, Amita Pavgi-Gokhale and Saylee Talwalkar. The turnout for Kashalkar’s concert, held last September, was not unusual; for at least a decade, he has been considered a musicians’ musician. Still, expectations were high: what would the maestro sing for this audience?
Organikos 