Little Rann of Kutch
Bird of the Day: Red-headed Merlin
Little Rann of Kutch
A Hint Of Evil, And Laughter May Be The Only Antidote
Thanks to this HBR Ideacast we had the opportunity to listen to the author of this book discuss its core message(s). Anyone who has looked at a few Dilbert cartoons can pretty well figure out that its author is not what you may think a typical MBA is. About 10 minutes into the podcast, the most remarkable statement, worthy of your attention, begins:
DAN MCGINN: So you’re saying management really doesn’t matter?
SCOTT ADAMS: I think it’s certainly something you can do wrong. So avoiding doing it wrong is the big thing. And I think if you’re a bit of a psychopath or sociopath, I don’t know the exact definitions of those, you know, if you push people to think that you being happier, and you as the manager making more money, and you as the company making more money is more important than the employees’ own personal life and their health, then you’re a great manager. And you absolutely can do great things. And you’ll probably be able to reproduce that wherever you go. Continue reading
Music and Dance at the Water’s Edge
South Indian Classical Dance
Guests at Cardamom County are usually out and about enjoying the Periyar Tiger Reserve, the town or the spice plantations during the day, but in the evening there’s a lot of excitement at Cardamom County, especially as we head in to the holiday season. Continue reading
The Contribution Of Old Photographs To Thinking Ahead
With news this past weekend of one of the largest tropical storms in recorded human history still fresh, our antennae are up. We believe in looking back in the interest of looking forward. The beginning and ending lines of this article can induce even those most unlikely to visit Sotheby’s next week:
For more than 100 years, nearly every time a ship ran aground off the coast of Cornwall, a man would arrive on the scene to document the wreckage. Continue reading
Solfatara
Sulphur Vent – Solfatara
Solfatara, a shallow volcanic crater in Pozzuoli, near Naples, is a hotbed (no pun intended) of geothermal activity. Upon walking into the depression, hemmed round by steep hills, the smell of rotten eggs greets your nose. The stench comes from the clouds of sulphurous steam pouring forth from vents in the rock. The Romans believed that this steam had healing properties Continue reading
Food-Related Whodunnit
Illustration for “HOT GREASE, The Wild West of used-cooking-oil theft”
Food and/or its by-products are not the centerpiece of any literary genre that we know of, other than cookbooks and more recently food histories. This week’s New Yorker has a welcome addition in the annals of food as a key ingredient in other genres:
A few months ago, in a clanging, hissing plant on the outskirts of Newark, a tanker truck backed up to a deep reservoir and delivered thousands of dollars’ worth of raw material—what people in the rendering industry sometimes refer to as “liquid gold.” The plant’s owner is a company called Dar Pro, and the C.E.O., Randall Stuewe, looked on while a hose from the truck gushed a brown fluid, filled with fine sediment and the occasional mysterious solid. Slowly, the pit became a pool, whose surface frothed and eddied and gave off a potent odor of old French fries, onion rings, and batter-fried shrimp. “Used cooking oil,” Stuewe told me. “We process two billion pounds a year.” Continue reading
Bird of the Day: House Wren Building Nest (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Mud-Puddling Butterflies
mud-puddling
Periyar Tiger Reserve is home to an impressive species diversity of 160 butterflies, underscoring the crucial relationship between plants and animals. Butterflies mainly males need minerals for reproduction, so they are often found gathering together to take salt and minerals from the wet soil and plants in a behavior called mud-puddling. Continue reading
Wildlife Sanctuaries of India — Ranthambore National Park
Photo credit: Abhinavmnnit
If you are looking for a wildlife sanctuary with a blend of rich history, Ranthambore National Park is the national park for you! Inside the park, the formidable Ranthambore fort lies overlooking the entire park area. There are three Hindu temples inside the fort dedicated to Ganesh, Shiva and Ramlalaji constructed in the 12th century. The fort itself was built in the 10th century and played a critical role in the historical development of Rajastan. Due to its strategic location between north and central India, many rulers coveted and fought over the area. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Smooth-billed Ani
Gamboa, Panama
Seeds Of Change
Rounding out the hat trick of food-related stories for today, this story details the intersection between food, commerce and governance:
Kauai has a long agricultural history – from the first Polynesian settlers thousands of years ago bringing taro — a starchy pacific vegetable – to plant, to biotech-companies producing genetically-modified crops today. When Captain James Cook landed on the island in 1778 — little did he know that he had stumbled upon a farmer’s utopia. Continue reading
Understanding Food More, Better
Speaking of food transparency, if you have not yet watched any of the lectures, you are missing an amazing opportunity to learn about the science of food from some of the greatest chefs of our time, in one of the great institutions of higher education. Click here to see this article at its source, and/or click the link below to visit the website where the course’s recordings of lectures by visiting guest chefs, including this one, are made available:
When Joanne Chang ’91 was approached by a cable TV network in 2006 to host a show about the science of sweets, she was thrilled. The owner of the landmark Flour Bakery and graduate of Harvard College, where she was an applied mathematics concentrator, Chang always enjoys discussing her pastries, but she loves talking about them at the molecular level best.
Lazing Across The Wilderness
Bamboo Rafting
In recent posts we’ve been sharing what guests spot during their excursion on the bamboo rafts. We were delighted that Ms. Helen Worsley was willing to share her experience through these beautiful photographs.
Bamboo rafting is either a half-day or full day program that starts in the early hours of morning. Forest guides in the reserve take guests on a 2-hour hike to where the rafts have been docked. The group consists of a maximum of 10 people excluding the guides who explain about the rich flora and fauna they spot on their hike. The hike itself is breathtaking for its wild beauty and by the time guests reach the raft they’re usually looking forward to what is to come. Continue reading
Food Transparency
Shelburne Farms’ clothbound cheddar has a bright yellow color because it’s made from the milk of cows that graze on grasses high in beta-carotene. Courtesy of A. Blake Gardner
We have been posting on the topic of transparency in food several times each year since starting this blog, so this news/commentary podcast fits in a tradition:
The news from Kraft last week that the company is ditching two artificial dyes in some versions of its macaroni and cheese products left me with a question.
Why did we start coloring cheeses orange to begin with? Turns out there’s a curious history here. Continue reading
Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Bird of the Day: Marabou Stork
Cardamom County – Home For One And All
Actias selene
This entire week we have been talking about the rich fauna in the Periyar Reserve and how it overlaps into Cardamom County. Today we share with you a rare sighting of the Indian Luna Moth! We found this little guest taking shelter in our cardamom plantation waiting for night to arrive as they usually only fly in the night. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Crimson-rumped Toucanet
Reserva Los Cedros, Ecuador
The Best Memories
Sighting Of The Day
Cardamom County receives guests of all ages who are enthusiastic about trekking, hiking and bamboo rafting as well as others who just like to relax in the beautiful ambiance of our property. Our privileged location across the street from the Periyar Tiger Reserve means a lot of overlap of fauna such as birds, butterflies and even monkeys between us, although obviously we don’t have any tigers on property! Continue reading
The Educational Mission Of A Food Entrepreneur
With students, under an elephant heart plum tree at the Edible Schoolyard Photography by William Abranowicz
We never tire of listening to Alice Waters or watching for her next move. This article is ostensibly focused on an award from the Wall Street Journal, but we are most interested in the educational component of her work, which closes out the article:
…AS THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD moves toward its third decade, Waters aims to expand its curriculum into high school programs, like at Edible Sac High, a Sacramento charter high school—housed within the second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi—where Waters’s ideals have been incorporated. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Dusky Grouse with Mating Display
Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
