Photo credit: Ramesh Kidagoor
The Mysore Flower Market is the perfect place to get fresh local flowers. Its bustling pathways are filled with roses, brightly coloured marigold and highly scented jasmine. This flower market is one of the city’s main attractions.
Photo credit: Stephen Crafts
Photo: Zagster. So far Zagster has set up its “bike fleet in a box” at about 55 locations
Click the image to the left for the story about Zagster, in the New York Times Green Blog:
Municipal bike sharing has rolled into dozens of American cities, from Washington to Oklahoma City to San Francisco. Now a Massachusetts start-up called Zagster aims to take the idea of bicycles on demand and deliver it to university and corporate campuses, apartment complexes, hotels and resorts.
On Thursday, the company, formerly called CityRyde, announced a $1 million round of investment that will allow it to expand nationally. In essence, Zagster’s idea is to make access to bikes a coveted building amenity and corporate perk, right up there with pools, gyms, and cafeterias — at a relatively low cost. Continue reading
The Red Helen is the third largest butterfly in India. The wings are dark in colour with a creamy white patch on its prominent “swallowtail” hind wings. These butterflies are mostly seen in the evergreen forests of the Western Ghats. Citrus tress, evodia and roxburghiana are the favorite food plants for these butterflies.
Photo credit: Stephen Crafts
Between the Western Ghats’ recent World Heritage Site designation and Periyar Tiger Reserve’s U.N. accolades reported here, awareness of our neighborhood is most certainly on the rise.
We’ve commented on PTR’s enlightened leadership previously, but it’s always encouraging to hear additional applause.
The Periyar Tiger Reserve (PTR) has won the coveted U.N.-India Biodiversity Governance award instituted by the Government of India and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the best managed protected area of the country.
Photo Credits: Remesh Kidangoor
Nandi Bull is one of the landmark tourist attractions of Mysore. The over 350 year old statue represents Lord Shiva’s vehicle and was created during the reign of Dodda Devaraja. The Nandi is the third largest in all of India, carved out of a single piece of a rock 15 ft height and 24 ft width.
Round Valley Reservoir, NJ
AP Copyright © MediaCorp Press Ltd
While the Periyar Tiger Reserve, which we are closest to and particularly amazed by, was the exception to the rule below, we understood the ban. Tiger habitat is threatened, and radical action was taken. The Periyar Tiger Reserve was exempted from the ban for reasons complex and rich enough that we will have to explain on another occasion, but in short there is a history of enlightened leadership of this particular Reserve. For the moment, we will just relay today’s news, which comes as a relief to all the businesses surrounding all the Tiger Reserves across India, who were severely affected by the ban. Continue reading
Damien Hirst in front of one of his butterfly canvases, part of his retrospective at Tate Modern. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features
He has his detractors (is he an artist or merely a shrewd entrepreneur?), but anyone who gives butterflies their due gets our attention:
Butterflies made Damien Hirst’s career and this is how he repays them: Continue reading
There are more than 50 well- known folk dances in Kerala. Although they are often related to religious rituals and mythological stories, they are also very much the languages of the people. Watching folk dance is an unforgettable experience for their dramatic costumes, vibrant colours and throbbing music.
Jeff Burrell/Wildlife Conservation Society
For a small good news story, click the image above. It is from the Green Blog of the New York Times, and is the kind of story you would not read about in India because there are no states quite like Wyoming:
Until recently, the population of pronghorn — a small antelope-like mammal endemic to North America — outnumbered people in its native Wyoming. The Cowboy State may be the nation’s least populous, but the two groups still manage to come into conflict. Pronghorns numbering in the tens of thousands cross Highway 191 each year during their annual migration, and collisions between animals and cars are costly for all involved. Continue reading
Kumily, Kerala
The submerged tree trunks in the 26sq km Periyar Lake nestled inside the forest create a favorite habitat for a number of aquatic birds, especially Large cormorants.
This is the first in a series of posts on a summer trip. Sorry it’s not quite summer anymore; things have been busy, but hopefully I’ll get the rest of these out before too long!
A little bit of background: I spent this summer studying ancient Greek language at the University of Berkeley. In late May, a few days before I was scheduled to catch my plane at Hartsfield-Jackson airport for Berkeley, I invited a few of my best friends over to bid them a fond farewell for the summer. Suffice to say, we ended up on the roof at three a.m. discussing how incredible it would be to do a cross-country road trip after my class was over. Now, we had thrown around this possibility dozens of times before, but this time, everything was a bit different. For one, none of us was a kid anymore; Tyler, my next door neighbor, had just graduated from University of Georgia; my brother, Carl, is going into his senior year at Emory University; and Nick, a good friend from high school, and I are both going into our junior years (Emory for me, Haverford for him). Moreover, all of us were itching to get out of our quiet suburbs and see some of the world before the relentless march of years and responsibility would make it impossible for us to take the trip together. Before we knew it, we were taking solemn oaths that we’d be hitting the road in shortly more than two months. Obviously, we did, or I wouldn’t be writing this now.
Photo credit: Stephen Crafts
Photo credit: Ramesh Kidangoor
One of the most colorful and oldest fruit markets in India, Mysore Fruit Market is famous for the freshness and purity of the produce available here. Just off the city’s main thoroughfare, this market is used by the locals daily. Continue reading
From the New Yorker’s website (click the image above to go to the story):
Can photovoltaics ever be romantic? Morphosis Architects’ design for a new academic building for the Cornell NYC Tech campus, scheduled to open on Roosevelt Island in 2017, suggests the answer could be yes. Continue reading
