My Tiger Trail Camping Experience: Team Kathy, Douglas, Fred and Salim

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Camping Team from left to right: Kathy, Douglas, Fred and Salim

I’ve passed the half-way point of my managment training with RAXA Collective and since our focus is conservation tourism part of my training has been understanding what the Periyar Tiger Reserve has to offer.  I recently had the opportunity to experience the overnight Tiger Trail, probably the very best that PTR has to offer. This was made even more interesting by joining a pair of experienced travelers who were here to enjoy Kerala’s biodiversity. Needless to say I had very high expectations! Continue reading →

Food As Good As Possible

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Maisie Greenawalt, a graduate of Cornell Hotel School (’93) shares her company’s approach to good food served to corporate clients. For any non-vegetarian, these are important and tough to solve issues.  She puts those issues right out there and if she does not hide from them, neither should we.  Click here to view on the Cornell website or here to view her TEDx presentation on an external site.  According to the Cornell presentation of this talk she is

vice president of strategy for Bon Appetit Management Company, which provides from-scratch food service to corporations, universities, and museums in 32 states. She’s been instrumental in shaping the company’s many pioneering commitments to social and environmental responsibility. Continue reading →

Marine Drive – Cochin, Kerala

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Photo credit:Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor

Marine Drive is considered one of the most beautiful parts of the city of Cochin, with a spectacular view of the backwaters and the Cochin harbour. This scenic strip is the popular hangout for many people with shopping, cinemas, restaurants, supermarkets, the rainbow bridge and a new walkway shaped like a house boat. Continue reading →

Vote now for the contest Sarifixation: a redesign challenge !

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sari collector on her way to work Ahmedabad, India (January, 2013) via sarifixation.comA sari: five yards of unstitched fabric ingeniously wrapped and draped. Nowadays, with the exhausting rhythm of fashion, tons of unwanted secondhand saris are discarded every day and collected by India’s informal rag-picker community who resell these fabrics. This task has gotten harder and harder to do as India’s GDP per capita rises along with a distaste for secondhand.

Back in 2010, Bijal Shah was working on slum development issues as a fellow of the AIF-Clinton Foundation for the NGO SAATH in Gujarat, India. In a sea of beautiful second hand sari fabric, she had the idea to turn secondhand Indian saris into one of a kind, exciting products. Continue reading →

Velakali – Traditional Dance, Kerala

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Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Originating among the traditional warriors of Kerala, Velakali is a ritual artform presented in a temple courtyard. Among the martial folk arts, this is one of the most spectacular and extremely vigorous dances performed in Kerala. Fifty or more dancers dress up as soldiers with colorful shields  and shining swords. Their fabulous attire includes a conical headdress and chests covered with beads and other types of garlands. The dance includes war-like steps in a line to the accompaniment of martial music. Fighting techniques are displayed by coming forward from the line.  Continue reading →

Tracking The Golden Swallow

/ Justin Proctor / 5 Comments
Marisol and Justin

Marisol and Justin

Dear La Paz Group followers,

I’m excited to have been invited to share with you current updates from the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic where I am active in uncovering the life history traits and conservation strategies surrounding the Golden Swallow (Tachycineta euchrysea), a threatened passerine endemic to the island of Hispaniola. Continue reading →

Underdogs, Against All Odds, Stage Successful Comeback

/ Organikos / 3 Comments

Thanks to the Atlantic Monthly‘s website for this story (click the image above to go to the source) about the resurgence of one of nature’s most historically feared beasts. Although the return of these animals has made relations between conservationists and farmers more difficult in Germany as elsewhere, the net gain for our natural world speaks for itself:

…Wolves have been absent from Germany for nearly a century, hunted out of existence by the end of the 1800s.

But over the past 10 years, they’ve made a comeback as packs from Poland and Russia have migrated into the sparsely populated eastern German state of Brandenburg. Today, some 160 wolves in 17 packs rove south and east of the capital Berlin, occasionally wandering into the city. Continue reading →

At Madurai’s Chithirai Thiruvizha Festival, Crowds, Flowers and a Golden Horse

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From the India Ink section of the New York Times website:

The city of Chennai, formerly Madras, may be the most famous of Tamil Nadu’s cities, but the historical and cultural heart of India’s southernmost state is arguably Madurai. Continue reading →

Mahadeva Temple – Vaikom, Kerala

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Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Vaikom Mahadeva Temple is one of the most famous and oldest Siva temple in Kerala. Legend has it that the Mahadeva Temple was constructed by Lord Parasurama, the 6th incarnation of Lord Vishnu and the mythological creator of Kerala. Continue reading →

Extreme recycling: Haathi Chaap, paper made from elephant dung

/ Allegra / 2 Comments

Stationery made of elephant dung. Among the entrepreneurial ventures I discovered while browsing through the sustainable products distributed by Raxa Collective at Cardamom County, this one must be my favorite. I had seen goat dung dried and then mixed with dirt to build houses in Masai villages in Kenya, but I had never seen tools or products made out of dung.  Continue reading →

For Bees, Europe Does The Right Thing

/ Organikos / 6 Comments
A bee collects pollen from a sunflower in Utrecht, the Netherlands. EU states have voted in favour of a proposal to restrict the use of pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. Photograph: Michael Kooren/Reuters

A bee collects pollen from a sunflower in Utrecht, the Netherlands. EU states have voted in favour of a proposal to restrict the use of pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. Photograph: Michael Kooren/Reuters

At a time when news out of Europe often points to political dysfunction, on at least one front we can point to some good news for these creatures who need help perhaps more than ever, and deserve it; they are finally getting it in at least one part of the world:

Europe will enforce the world’s first continent-wide ban on widely used insecticides alleged to cause serious harm to bees, after a European commission vote on Monday.

The suspension is a landmark victory for millions of environmental campaigners, backed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), concerned about a dramatic decline in the bee population. The vote also represents a serious setback for the chemical producers who make billions each year from the products and also UK ministers, who voted against the ban. Both had argued the ban would harm food production. Continue reading →

Living in a small space and loving it : inspiration from Graham Hill

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When he had a choice Treehugger.com founder Graham Hill chose to live in a small apartment. He believed it would allow him to live within his means  financially, environmentally and beyond…

Continue reading →

Lost City Of The Monkey God

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

Another great article (click the image to the left to go to the source), complementing this recent one from the New Yorker, about one special location within the region several members of Raxa Collective have called home for most of the last two decades:

The rain forests of Mosquitia, which span more than thirty-two thousand square miles of Honduras and Nicaragua, are among the densest and most inhospitable in the world. “It’s mountainous,” Chris Begley, an archeologist and expert on Honduras, told me recently. “There’s white water. There are jumping vipers, coral snakes, fer-de-lance, stinging plants, and biting insects. And then there are the illnesses—malaria, dengue fever, leishmaniasis, Chagas’.” Nevertheless, for nearly a century, archeologists and adventurers have plunged into the region, in search of the ruins of an ancient city, built of white stone, called la Ciudad Blanca, the White City. Continue reading →

Panchavadyam – Rhythms Of Kerala

/ Salim.E.I / 3 Comments
Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo Credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Panchavadyam is an orchestra made up of five instruments, primarily percussion but one wind instrument – chenda, kombu, kuzhal, elathalam and maddalam. Kerala temple festivals are the ideal occasion to witness its entire range of traditional musical expertise. Originally this was the music that accompanied temple processions where caparisoned elephants carried the idol. A panchavadyam performance takes hours, with a pyramid-like rhythmic structure in which the instruments go through five musical stages, or peaks.
Continue reading →

So I’ve arrived at Cardamom county #2: Eating as a physical activity

/ Allegra / 1 Comment

Sunday breakfast indian-style: a meal that just requires to be eaten with the hands

I was about to start my meal at the canteen with my colleagues yesterday when I decided it was time to take the dive and eat with my hands. Boy, was it an exercise, I mean a physical exercise.

As a first-timer I was quite slow: I’ve read it is most polite to use your thumb, pointer and middle finger, and to let only the first two joints of those fingers touch the food.  I’m not sure that I did all that. Also you only eat with your right hand,  even if you’re a lefty. The left hand will take care of menial things such as wiping your tears of eyes after a spicy curry. The whole meal activates so many muscles that it left me exhausted.  It got me thinking about the lack of thought and the lack of physical effort me and my folks, in  westernized countries, put into the act of eating. Eating with the hands is common in many areas of the world, including parts of Asia and much of Africa and the Middle East and it has plenty of health benefits. Continue reading →