Thevara Morning
The Life and Times of a Kerala Fishing Town
Returning with the days catch
We’ve written previously about Keralalites’ love for fish. However, eating it is only half the story; how it enters into people’s lives is another part of it. Here we’ll share how daily life starts for many locals in a fishing town.
Fishermen usually leave their nets in the water overnight and come back in the morning with prayers in their heart for a good catch. Often luck is with them and their prayers are answered, primarily due to the healthy waters along Kerala’s coastline. Continue reading
Stop The Rot
One-fifth of what households buy ends up as waste, and around 60% of that could have been eaten, according to a report from the government’s waste advisory group, Wrap. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod
The Guardian carried a story recently about how in the UK food producers, sellers and consumers are being urged to support a ban on food waste going to landfills by 2020 to which we add our hurrah:
…Compulsory collections of food waste from all homes and businesses by local councils are among a series of measures recommended in a new report to enable food waste to be harnessed as a valuable resource to provide energy, heat and benefits for agriculture.
The ambition is to save the UK economy over £17bn a year through the reduction of food wasted by households, businesses and the public sector, preventing 27m tonnes of greenhouse gases a year from entering into the atmosphere.
The new study, Vision 2020: UK Roadmap to Zero Food Waste to Landfill is the culmination of more than two years’ work and has the backing and input of local authority and industry experts. It sets the framework for a food waste-free UK by 2020. Continue reading
Need We Say More?
Bird of the Day: Black-necked Stilt (Ría Lagartos Biosphere Reserve, Mexico)
Collaboration For Impact
Photograph: Robert Knight Archive/Redferns/Getty.
You need not be a fan of his guitar style, which is unique; nor his producer credentials, which are significant. You do not even have to like the Rolling Stones to appreciate the following:
(It is worth noting, perhaps, that before Keith Richards encountered Cooder, he was essentially a strummer. After their encounters, during which, Richards has written, he took Cooder for all he was worth, the modern Rolling Stones, with the two guitars attempting to manage rhythmically and harmonically what Cooder accomplished with one, were born.) Continue reading
Queen of Spices
Cardamom
Cardamom is known as the “Queen of Spices” and Kumily is known to have the biggest cardamom market in the world. Exceptional care goes into growing this spice. It needs a minimum altitude of 800 to 1200 meters above sea level and plenty of shade and water. Kumily is located at 1100 meters with an average annual rainfall of 3000 millimeters, making it the perfect atmosphere for the plant to thrive. Continue reading
Waste Not, Want Less
The Atlantic‘s Senior Editor, James Hamblin, MD, has advice we are compelled to share:
What do you think an apple core is? What’s the thing we throw away?
It is a ghost. If you eat your apples whole, you are a hero to this ghost. If you do not, you are barely alive. Come experience vitality.
Earlier this year, in “How to Eat Apples Like a Boss,” a video by Foodbeast, the Internet was promised the gift of confidence in apple-eating. Elie Ayrouth ate an apple starting at the bottom, proceeding to up to the top, and finishing with a wink to the camera, as bosses do. Eating as such, Foodbeast said, the core “disappears.”
Bird of the Day: Lark Bunting
Pawnee National Grassland, CO
Kathakali
Last night I had the opportunity to see a Kathakali performance, which is a classical Indian dance-drama that originated in Kerala in the 17 th century.
I arrived a little bit late because I was sitting at the wrong section of the performing center, so I missed the introduction of what the dancers were depicting. Yet, I was still wholly captivated when I walked into the theater: the make-up on the dancers was so incredibly colorful and elaborate. The dark, fierce black liners around their eyes made them look a bit intimidating as well. In addition to the make-up, the dancers were wearing head pieces, skirts, and pants that were bejeweled and feathered with colorful ornaments. Continue reading
Thunbergia fragrans – Sweet Clock Vine
Thunbergia fragrans
Native to India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, Thunbergia fragrans, or Sweet Clock Vine, is a slender perennial twiner found plentifully along the hill station roads. It flowers from August to December and cultivated as a garden plant.
Engineering A Safer Future On The Road
The Google car knows every turn. It never gets drowsy or distracted, or wonders who has the right-of-way. Illustration by Harry Campbell.
In most of the developing world, or at least where La Paz Group operates and where more and more European and North Americans are engaged in experiential travel, road conditions and driving habits are “different.” It is our educated guess that these travelers do not consider driving time to be their favorite part of these experiences. We do not hide from this fact. On the contrary, we take our drivers’ safety training seriously. But we are always on the lookout for new approaches. This week’s new New Yorker magazine, hot off the press, is the annual technology-focused issue. An article there has got us thinking and discussing:
Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks. They rubberneck, hotdog, and take pity on turtles, cause fender benders, pileups, and head-on collisions. They nod off at the wheel, wrestle with maps, fiddle with knobs, have marital spats, take the curve too late, take the curve too hard, spill coffee in their laps, and flip over their cars. Of the ten million accidents that Americans are in every year, nine and a half million are their own damn fault. Continue reading
Asiatic Elephants in the Dhikala Grasslands
Corbett National Park is a great place to make some great images of Asiatic Elephants and May is an especially good season to be there. The Dhikala grasslands complements the elephants by providing a great background for your photography.
A zoom lens in the 100-400 or 80-400 range serves best for this area as it provides flexibility to make close-ups or to include the habitat in the shot.
While composing this image I waited for the baby elephant to show itself as it was always behind its mother. Continue reading
Science-Education-Technology Convergence
Museums and libraries are the stewards of culture in many ways. They both offer us a place to go for quiet contemplation as well as dynamic discovery. Kudos to the Smithsonian for accepting new technologies with open arms and sharing it with their researchers, curators, educators and conservators, and thereby with us.
Bird of the Day: Brahminy Kite
Thippagondanahalli Reservoir, Karnataka
Our Gang, Thevara, (Team Spirit)
It is that time of the year. The place where the cow is often roaming, or otherwise is just pleasant open space, becomes energentic-kid-space about now. Soon it will be school break time and the kids are thinking about what they will do with all that free time. So today, as two of Raxa Collective’s team members were walking through the neighborhood the kids stopped them and asked: Want to be on our team?
Education As Social Enterprise
Everyone in modern market economies accepts that companies need to make a buck (rupee, yen, peso or what have you), and generally no one grudges them the opportunity to do so, as long as they do so responsibly. Grudging can follow a company’s bold commitment to “do no evil” when that company is discovered to have done something less than awesome. This raises the stakes for social enterprises, who from the outset claim to do something other than for pure profit motivation. Daphne Koller, Co-Founder of Coursera, makes a compelling case for having risen to the occasion in this podcast interview:
Coursera was launched in 2012 and reached its first one million users faster than Facebook or Twitter. Coursera is one of a number of companies offering massive open online courses– or MOOCs– to address a growing global population and the rising costs of on-campus higher education.
Yellow Dahlia
Yellow Dahlias are the most common member of the species found in Kerala’s hill range gardens. These wonderful, spectacular flowers love locations that are sunny but not too hot. They also thrive in open areas where they can develop undisturbed.
Capturing Falling Waters
During my recent trip to Chikmagalur, I visited this small waterfall in Jerry estate which offered a good opportunity to try out various compositions. Unfortunately I wasn’t carrying my vario ND filter so couldn’t get a slower shutter speed than this, but since I’ll be going back there in December I’ll know to be better prepared.
In many circumstances people say that “location is everything”, and that definitely was the case with this waterfall. The maximum depth of the pool at it’s base was probably 2 ft, so we could walk around and check various angles to shoot from with very little risk. The fact that there was no heavy current allowed us to easily stand in the flowing water to get low-level shots. Continue reading
