How about traditional boats in the Periyar Tiger Reserve ?

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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 →

Save Soil, Perhaps Even Improve It By Drinking Organic Coffee

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SaveOurSoil_LOGOThe news we pointed to about coffee-making best practices was mainly about the last step of a long chain–when the coffee is just about to give its olfactory, gustatory and other pleasures upon consumption.  It linked to an earlier post about the artisanal agriculture link in the coffee-making value chain, but here we add one more link on that topic. It has strong recommendations about what else we as consumers might do to assist in coffee-making best practices. It brings to mind topics we have covered in non-coffee posts, such as altruism, which we have considered more than once; and collective action, likewise more than a passing interest.

When we have the opportunity to support a good cause, at minimum we can give it attention here by linking to it, and with great pleasure we do so for our friends at Counter Culture Coffee:

Our soils are in crisis. Conventional, chemical-based farming is destroying soil health, leaving farms with increasingly barren earth. Extraordinary coffee – that which we are dedicated to – needs rich, thriving soil, since healthy soil leads to healthy coffee trees, prosperous farms, and delicious coffee. Continue reading →

Best of Salim E.I.: Powder Puff Tree (Calliandra haematocephala)

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Native to the tropical and sub-tropical regions of India and West Africa, the Calliandra haematocephala is a fast growing evergreen plant that can reach the height of 15 ft. The stamens of the flower are smooth and soft, spreading out in an arching circle, giving rise to the common name Powder Puff Tree.

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Krulwich On Insect Communities Understood Through Mathematics

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Another of those wonders, this time about bees, brought to you by the godfather of fun science reporters:

Solved! A bee-buzzing, honey-licking 2,000-year-old mystery that begins here, with this beehive. Look at the honeycomb in the photo and ask yourself: (I know you’ve been wondering this all your life, but have been too shy to ask out loud … ) Why is every cell in this honeycomb a hexagon? Continue reading →

“Shipwrecked pictures” from the Albert Khan museum : can our community help identify these photographs ?

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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?

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Siberian Tigers Return, Humans Shrug In Ambivalence

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Decades of poaching and logging in China and elsewhere have ravaged the Siberian tiger population, with only about 500 left in the wild worldwide. Photograph: Tim Davis/Corbis

Decades of poaching and logging in China and elsewhere have ravaged the Siberian tiger population, with only about 500 left in the wild worldwide. Photograph: Tim Davis/Corbis

In our day to day work, how humans and wild animals interact is often a matter of personal fulfillment, though at times we tend to the challenging aspects as well.  The Guardian‘s coverage of the fate of charismatic mega-felines falls into this latter category with a mixed message of one wild animal’s population rebound and what can only be described as practical human reaction:

…Decades of poaching and logging have ravaged the population of the big cat, also known as Amur tigers– only about 500 still live in the wild worldwide. In 2010, Chinese authorities launched an initiative to boost numbers in the Hunchun National Siberian Tiger Nature Reserve near the country’s border with Russia and North Korea. Continue reading →

Best of Salim E.I. : Chinese Fishing Nets

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The Chinese Fishing Net is one of the tourist attractions in Kerala that is a living fishing method in use for the last 650 years. Locally it is known as Cheenavala. By origin it was introduced by the Chinese explorer Zheng He. Continue reading →

Best Practices, Coffee Edition

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Coffee

Click the image to the left to go to the video, if you are the coffee-loving type.  The follow up to this earlier story is here:

It’s not hard to brew a great cup of coffee—at least, it shouldn’t be. There are only two ingredients: coffee and water. And there are only two firm rules: these ingredients must be combined and then, sometime later, separated. (In fact, this second rule is somewhat less firm: when professionals are evaluating coffee, they typically let the grounds settle at the bottom of the cup, and use a rounded spoon to scoop small mouthfuls from near the surface.) Continue reading →

April 23 : a night of celebrations in Thekkady

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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

Saint-George Orthodox church in Thekkady

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Best of Salim E.I.: Signature Spider (Argiope anasuja)

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Signature Spiders are commonly found in India, especially the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Their name comes from their distinctive  zig-zag patterned X in the center of their webs.

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Documentaries : Black Out by Eva Weber, children searching for the light

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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.

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Dispatch From Everest

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India Ink has a story about a group of young Indians collaborating in the upper reaches of the region’s mountains, at a time when many are celebrating the six decades-old historic accomplishment in the same region:

KHUMBU GLACIER —It was nearly 60 years ago this month that Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa guide, and Sir Edmund Hillary from New Zealand scaled the highest peak in the world, Mount Everest. Continue reading →

Best of Salim E.I.: The Harvest Dance

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In India Kerala is famous for its Tribal folk dances. There are more than fifty well-known popular folk dances in the state which are mostly performed for religious influences, during harvesting, sowing of seeds, festivals etc. Tribal dances are often accompanied by songs & instruments.

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The logistics dilemma: double passenger scooter or double-decker lorry ?

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Transporting products around the Ghats credit Ea Marzarte 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 →

Barefoot College

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This organization and its founder came to our attention recently in a by-now familiar manner: our go-to podcast for interesting and inspiring stories of entrepreneurs, From Scratch, featuring Bunker Roy. Read about Barefoot College here and then click through their site to see more about their accomplishments:

In the late 60’s, a very small group of determined individuals in India, coming out of a sound educational system, felt it necessary to look for alternative ways of living, thinking and looking for rural solutions. Continue reading →