Vytilla Junction; “The person who fought for the rights of Black People–Dear Nelson Mandela”
From Behind the Wheel: Nelson Mandela Roadside Obituary
Kerala Named Among Top 10 Holiday Destinations
Fort Cochin; Photo credits: Manoj Vasudevan
Known as “God’s Own Country”, Kerala is one of the most beautiful states in India. Lonely Planet apparently agrees by citing it among the World’s 10 best destinations for a family holiday in 2014. The Lonely Planet award for Best Family Destination was bestowed at the World Travel Mart in London, the leading trade event attended by industry representatives from around the world. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Blackburnian Warbler
Los Cedros Reserve, Ecuador
Periyar Through The Water
When I think of Thekkady and the Periyar Tiger Reserve, what comes to mind is a lake surrounded by thick, dense forests, and the iconic dried tree snags created when the lake was formed by the Mullaperiyar Dam over 100 years ago, not to mention the elephants that often frequent the water’s edge. It was cloudy when I left for the boat excursion and by the time I reached the boat landing, it was pouring; it is monsoon season after all. Salim said there would be fewer “sightings”, as the locals put it, since the animals tend to take cover in the rain.
Church Festivals
St. Mary’s Church, Kottayam; photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
Kerala is known for the abundance of churches that can be found every few kilometers. Every Christian family in Kerala is associated to a church, which represents the major celebrations in a family from baptism, to a child’s religious education, to his or her marriage. In this way the church plays a vital role in every individual’s and family’s life. St Mary’s church celebrates five feasts through the year which attracts lakhs of devotes seeking blessings. Continue reading
Carbon Connectivity
Bird of the Day: Pelican
Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan
Antarctic Exploration One Century Ago
Thanks to the Guardian‘s occasional history lessons via photography, like this one:
Eschewing the race for the South Pole, geologist and explorer Douglas Mawson took his scientific expedition to the eastern Antarctic – a region totally unmapped and unexplored. Here is a glimpse of the photographic archive that records their epic journey
Temple Elephants
“The Lord”
Historically elephants have been part of the rich culture of Kerala. As the physical representative of Lord Ganesha, people consider this animal a harbinger of good fortune, a remover of obstacles and an inseparable and integral part of religious and economic life as both temples and mosques embraced the animal during festivals. Continue reading
Sea Eagle Selfie
Caught red-beaked: This eagle grabbed a small wildlife camera in western Australia, flew away with it and then pecked away at the lens.
Thanks to National Public Radio in the USA for this story, which looks like it could be product placement (for Bushnell, to whom we can only say bravo even if we are not generally thrilled by the blurring of journalism and commerce) disguised as oddball news:
We’ve been fascinated by an “eagle cam” trained on a nest in Iowa and been thrilled by the view from a camera attached to an eagle that soared above Chamonix, France.
If you liked those, you’ll likely be interested in this, too:
Earlier this year, a young sea eagle picked up a small wildlife camera from the banks of western Australia’s Kimberley Margaret River, rangers tell the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Horned Lark
Pawnee National Grassland, CO
The Rich Life Of Samuel Beckett
For those of us (and there is more than one of us among Raxa Collective contributors to this blog) who took advanced literature courses during high school in the 1970s, when Samuel Beckett was still writing and directing, this post on the New Yorker‘s website is a thrill. Beckett was taught in a manner that made him seem to a teenager like a contemporary Shakespeare. We had no images of him to know how amazing his face was, nor any details of his life until a biography that came out after his passing. So, we appreciate this:
In this week’s issue of the magazine, Hilton Als reviews the current production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” directed by Sean Mathias, at the Cort Theatre.
In contrast to the minimalism of his plays, Beckett himself led a rich life. An Irishman in Paris, he met James Joyce in the nineteen-twenties, and the author took Beckett under his wing as a research assistant for a book that eventually became “Finnegans Wake.”
Silky Elephant Glory
Argyreia nervosa
Native to India, Silky Elephant Glory is a large woody, perennial climber with heart shaped leaves with silky silver undersides–both he leaves and roots are used in traditional medicine.
Wine In India
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times. Sampling the product at York Winery.
Thanks to India Ink for bringing our attention to a story about our neighborhood, broadly defined:
Cultivating a Wine Region in India | “In India, where whiskey is the alcoholic drink of choice and teetotalers exist by the legions, a wine culture has been almost nonexistent,” Shivani Vora wrote in The New York Times. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-bellied Plover (El Cuyo, Mexico)
Shiva Temple – Ettumanoor
Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor
The Siva Temple in Ettumanoor is a huge temple with excellent woodcarvings and 16th century murals depicting deeds of Krishna and scenes from The Ramanaya. Another added attraction is the mural depicting Lord Shiva performing his cosmic tandava dance. Continue reading
Camera Trap Commentary
The following was contributed by Dr. Jason G. Goldman to Scientific American‘s blog. The author received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California, so when we read his views on camera traps, a subject that we have posted on as often as possible, we can feel confident that his scientific perspective is a worthy one:
…Maybe it’s because camera traps offer up a rare opportunity to catch a glimpse of nature on its own, undisturbed by our species. It’s a romantic notion, isn’t it? Nature untouched. It’s foolish to think that humans exist apart from nature; we are but one species in a massive tree of life. As in physics, so too in wildlife biology. Continue reading
Trance Around the World
A Goa Sunset. Image Courtesy: http://howanxious.wordpress.com
As a young, avid and ferocious consumer of music dabbling in amateur production, this post has been a long time coming. No doubt everybody has their individual preferences when it comes to music, and I don’t want to be that person with the single-minded elitist views on what someone should or should not listen to (for the record my favorite band is The Doors), because I’m not. I love trance music, it’s melodic, it’s uplifting, it’s beautiful, it makes people dance, it has great history, and when it’s done right it can be very emotional.
Bird of the Day: Little Bee-eater (Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya)
Restoration, Recollections & Rewards
All photos courtesy of the AKTC
We’d been living in Kerala for 6 months before we traveled back to the U.S. via Delhi in order to update our visas. Having only experienced the sights in my “southern home” up until that point, we scheduled our flight to allow for a Delhi city tour, and Humayun’s Tomb was the first item on the agenda.Unluckily for us the “Travel Gods” were not favoring us, and between flight delays and Delhi traffic we reached the gates of the tomb compound at 5:58pm, just in time for us to see the guard saunter over to lock them for the night. I was seriously disappointed, but I’ve since learned that perhaps those aforementioned gods were looking after our best interest after all. Continue reading
Organikos 