Kingfisher – Messenger of Hope

/ Martin Smith / Leave a comment

BAM! The usual silence of the internet café at Cardamom County is suddenly and startlingly broken as one of its large windows deflects a wayward bird. The bird, a kingfisher with feathers as vibrantly colorful as nature allows, lay still in the bush, ostensibly lifeless.

This is how my morning started, but thankfully, not how it ended. I quickly ran next door to the gift shop seeking help from Manoj, guest relations executive, thinking that he might know what to do. We approached the bush to find the bird still breathing. Manoj tugged at it gently, expecting to extract a paralyzed, fading animal. Then, with the same unexpected abruptness that it collided with the windowpane, it fluttered and flew away, as if all it needed was to be untangled from the branches it landed in. The kingfisher, disoriented, had another less than graceful clash, this time with the bushes that line the pool. Fearing again the worst, I approached, and it took flight again, finally landing as intended, perched on the branch of another of the poolside shrubs. It was stunned. As it took its time recollecting itself, I ran and got my camera to snap these photos.

Continue reading →

Of Mist And Maize

/ Amie Inman / 6 Comments

We’ve lived in India a year now (more on that in another post) and for much of this time I’ve wanted to visit Munnar, the iconic tea-laden hill station in the Western Ghats.  Most of our mountain excursions have been to Thekkady, a place we’ve grown to love for its proximity to the Periyar Tiger Reserve, and the team we work with at Cardamom County.

This weekend we had the best reason for a change of route–to scout a prospective organic farm that might join our portfolio of properties under management–so I was looking forward to also discovering the differences between these two hill stations.  I did in fact find something different in Munnar, but not in the way I was expecting it.  Continue reading →

Cool, Cool Water

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

Our quest to find new, ever-more effective ways to live well and responsibly (simultaneously), if not Big Ideas, sometimes leads us to counter-trendy moments of truth.  It feels right to discuss sustainable development using the language that has been in circulation for 25 years or so:

meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

Yet, it was a refreshing splash of water on the face, a dash of realism, to read the last line of this brief profile:

…Lassoie’s personal belief that no one wants to sacrifice their present condition for the condition of future generations.

“I’ve never met anybody anywhere who would sacrifice their children for their unborn grandchildren,” he said.

Read the article to understand the context, and you may find yourself thinking about returning to graduate school if you consider this kind of conundrum (truly good statements contrasted with realistically true statements) fascinating, as we do.  Finding this profile was an extension of our investigation into the resources at Cornell University related to sustainable development and conservation, which previously led us here.

Going Social

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Notice the new tab to the right inviting you to engage with our Facebook page. In the spirit of community, collaboration & conservation, we are asking you to get social and share ideas there. As an informal platform, we are connecting people from around the globe who are interested or invested in “getting in touch with the luxury that nature offers,” using any interpretation of the phrase that fits the circumstance.

Have something to say about conservation, social enterprise, sustainable tourism?  Have an interesting travel story in a destination where these things may be relevant, or a first-hand experience with RAXA Collective? Photos you’d like to share? Why not share them with us and others by posting on our wall?

This is helping our momentum in making a difference… with your stories and  consideration for the people and places who make travel worthwhile.  Join in!

Lion-Tailed Macaque

/ Martin Smith / 1 Comment

Around Cardamom County, we’re used to seeing bonnet macaques, those overly friendly little grayish-brown rascals that scurry about causing the cute kinds of mischief that might be typical of a cartoon character. More recently, we’ve been visited almost daily by small troops of nilgiri langurs, endangered primates with a little less personality and a bit more intimidation factor. Having grown relatively familiar with these two species, I’d thought I’d seen all the monkeys that the Periyar had to offer. How naïve of me…

Allow me to introduce to you, the lion-tailed macaque.

Continue reading →

A “Travel” Book That Moved Me

/ Crist Inman / 4 Comments

If you have already read his more famous books, and enjoy his writing, you will wonder why this one is not considered among Umberto Eco’s most important.  He does not even mention it in one of the best interviews he has granted in the English language.

Strange. My being in India now is at least in part due to this book. For the work we do it is an illuminating text, in an Eco-intuitive, not everything is as it seems kind of way. If I made a list of top 10 choices for the one book to take on one of those desert island strandings, this would be on it.

Our Gang, Thekkady

/ Organikos / 5 Comments

Behind Cardamom County there is a hill leading up to a ranger’s entrance to the Periyar Reserve.  On that hill, there is a group of boys.  If they encounter you, and you appear to have music (telltale earbuds), they will want to know what you are listening to. If they like the music, they will invite you to dance to it.  It is an invitation you cannot, or at least should not, refuse.  When you dance, they will dance with you, copying your moves but teaching you new ones at the same time.  Practice those moves before your next visit to the hill.  This little gang will invite the entire neighborhood to watch.  There will be laughter. But it will be with you, not at you.

Sense of Place

/ Martin Smith / 1 Comment

Many major hotel firms with an international presence put a heavy emphasis on global standards of service, operations, amenities and rooms. Combined with product branding, what often results is a relatively indistinguishable hotel experience, instigating a sort of déjà vu effect in anyone who has seen enough of them. Globe-trotting business people find themselves waking up in a hotel room in London that is identical to last week’s hotel room in New York and eerily similar to last month’s hotel room in Buenos Aires. For those with enough experience in these big-box hotels, they all start to blend together, and even the feng shui starts to flow in the same rhombic way. My tone here might sound like one of aversion to this homogeneity, but it’s only out of preference for a different approach. The emphasis on standards is of course reasonable and has its benefits: guests are not thrown by inconsistencies; their comforts and preferences are reliably tended to; hospitality organizations can streamline project development and design. But an alternative approach, favored by travelers who seek to connect authentically with their destinations, is a tip of the hat to the immediate surroundings; a fusion of the salient hospitality experience with the more ethereal cultural and environmental elements of the host locale.  Continue reading →

Visit with Vijaykumar Thondaman, “Bird of the Day” Photographer

/ Martin Smith / 6 Comments

Today we had a visit from a very important contributor, Mr. Vijaykumar Thondaman, the generous gentleman whose remarkable photography skills and passion for wildlife have furnished us with the ever-popular “Bird of the Day” series.

We forgot to snap a photo so we stole this one of Mr. Thondaman (left) with assistant Jayan

Sipping tea and chatting with Vijaykumar was not only an honor (in addition to being an accomplished wildlife photographer and naturalist, he is the nephew of the Late His Highness Raja Rajagopala Thondaman, the ninth and last ruler of the erstwhile Pudukottai State), but it was also an educational exploration of the feathered fauna of southern India. With a palpable passion for the subject, his ornithological knowledge is the consequence of a unique upbringing, as his father, Maharajkumar Radhakrishna Thondaman, maintained a mini zoo with blackbuck, sambar, chital, barking deer, four-horned antelope, foxes, crocodiles, pythons and wild and imported birds. More specific than his father’s captive collection was his small ornithological museum where Vijaykumar learned taxidermy at a young age. Vijaykumar grew up in the 100-acre campus of the New-Palace (the present Collectorate), which had a collection of rare trees and shrubs and wildly roaming peacocks, rabbits, partridges, quails, blackbucks and chitals, none of which exist there anymore. His love affair with wild-life, however, has been an indelible part of his life ever since. Continue reading →

Collaboration Without Borders

/ Amie Inman / 2 Comments

Until they mate, acorn woodpeckers devote their time to gathering food for their relatives’ young. Credit: Walter Koenig

Let me tell you why I love Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are the designated “Science” day in the New York Times.  I should also say that I love Wednesdays, too!  That would be the “Food and Wine” day.

The fact that today is Friday only goes to show that I don’t always have time to view the paper on a daily basis.

In light of the Vijaykumar Thondaman‘s Bird Of The Day posts, I was excited to see this article about the collaborative nature of this species of woodpecker.

Sindya N. Bhanoo writes:

Acorn woodpeckers are industrious, cooperative birds that live in family groups. Each family has several “helper” woodpeckers that do not breed. These birds devote their time to gathering acorns and other food for the young.

In other words, they’re the equivalent of  ornithological  “nannies”.

I hope you’ll agree that the concept is interesting…and the photo isn’t bad, either!

Ezra, Zephaniah, Amos, Edward & James

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

The discussion about whether or not to work under the Raxa Collective name had already been a couple hundred hours long as of early March, 2011. Emotions were at full tilt on this and that consideration when a team showed up and got us to the tipping point. Lindsay and Nicole were perfectly balanced, for these purposes, between interested and disinterested. Not to mention interesting. And sometimes very interesting.

Credit where credit is due.  The fellow who founded Cornell University, from which (by some measure) we have had the most inputs for this venture, and the fellow who is credited with the decision by which Amherst College came to exist, can take a momentary bow to the fellows who represent the namesake of the business school at Dartmouth College, the funding of that business school, and (for our purposes here) most importantly the fellow who funded the initiative that brought Lindsay and Nicole to work with us and convince us of our convictions.

It’s A Tough Job…

/ Amie Inman / 4 Comments

One of the many hats I wear within my La Paz Group responsibilities is orienting our new interns and visiting colleagues to the Kerala experience.

The usual itinerary includes a visit to some of the cultural sights at Fort Kochi, as well as Backwater excursions and of course, Thekkady and the Periyar Tiger Reserve.

I think I can say without reservation that each intern who enters the reserve has expressed the clear desire to encounter one of India’s most charismatic fauna–the elephant– and some have been luckier than others.

An important part of Indian mythology and culture, here in Kerala elephants were once called “sons of the Sahya”, meaning “sons of the Western Ghats”–referring to the mountain range that not only forms the border with a neighboring state but represents the heart of this one. Continue reading →

A Different Good

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

To get to a basic meaning of good using music, plenty of choices were available beyond the “folk,” “ska” and “world” categories. Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven among many other classical composers had more than enough to say musically that helps us get a grip on good.  The point was more about Pete Seeger’s character, and his choice to not back down and his ability to not become embittered by the injustice; the choice The Specials made to sing to protest a hero’s unjust imprisonment, or Raghu Dixit’s choice to celebrate virtue through a young girl.

For a cinematic rendering of good, Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World comes to mind, which brings the topic back to good music.  Lou Reed does not normally evoke good the way Pete Seeger does, but his contribution to the soundtrack of this film, What’s Good, is worth a listen.  It approaches the subject by pondering inexplicable loss.  Another contributor to that soundtrack is even harder to associate with the word good, but if you listen to him in conversation, he sure sounds like he knows something about good.

Are there equations predicting good behavior other than George Price’s?  If so, please share.  Meanwhile, you might find Laurie Anderson’s Let X = X, a fine diversion.