Blogs from Karnataka, India, Asia - page 13

Hey everybody, So it’s been almost 3 weeks since my first blog-post. By now I can say I’ve settled in quite nicely out here. Malvikaa left to the US a few days ago though she left the land last Sunday morning, so since then I’ve been ‘alone’ with the guys from Auroville. I hope to be travelling a little bit with them when they leave but it depends on whether there’s space in the cars. Anyway, that’s all in the future. In the past so many days I’ve only been off the land twice – once to visit a local furniture maker who’s ‘factory’ is just down the road and another time to the town of Gundlupet to buy groceries. It’s good to be with some other white people who can show me how they do ... read more

I recently re-discovered a childhood craze of mine. As a kid, I would literally beg anyone I could find with a cycle to lend it to me for a few minutes. Those were not the days of speciality kids cycles (or at least we could not afford one), so a lot of us would 'half pedal' on adult cycles - yes, the big black heavy ones. Since we did not have one in our house, any guest or neighbour who had one fell victim to my persistent pleading. Well, 30 years later, I can afford a much better cycle, and don't need to plead anyone any more. I makes me wonder why I did not re-start cycling earlier. Anyway - I got myself a Schnell Jaguar 2.0 MTB about a month ago, and after a couple ... read more

Alright... Dear family, friends, and others who may be reading this... I'm still alive! Hooray! Not that it's really a surprise, but I hope you'll all be pleased to know this. Anyway, let me start with a quick overview of what's going on here: Basically, in search of a form of 'right livelihood', I started studying Regional Development & Innovation (RDI) back in 2012. There I heard about and got interested in permaculture, which lead to my doing a 10-week internship at Quail Springs in California in 2013, as part of my RDI studies. At Quail Springs I met Malvikaa Solanti and Levi Mataga, who have been working on a permaculture project called SwaYYam in South India. After almost a year and a half of 'regular' studying in Wageningen, I contacted Malvikaa to ask if I ... read more

I love morning game drives. Out at dawn, in time to watch the sun come up over the forest. It’s cool but not cold, in the breeze created as you drive in an open jeep. The air is fresh, and smells slightly of smoke, either woodsmoke from the villagers' fires, or from the controlled but now dead fires set along the paths in the forest to improve the chance of seeing animals. So the first ten to twenty feet from the road is dark grey, with a scattering of ash and some lines of white where logs have slowly smouldered out of existence. Beyond that there is sometimes forest and sometimes scrub. The forest consists of mostly spindly trees, well spaced out, with skinny silver trunks, interspersed with some bigger trees with dark bark that looks ... read more

One of the UNESCO world heritage sites, HAMPI is a small village in the northern part ofKarnatakaStateinIndia. We left for Hampi from Chitradurga afternoon on the last week of December. It took three hours to reach the place. Hampi is situated on the banks of theTungabhadraRiver. Like Mahabalipuram in Tamilnadu this place also represents the sculptural arts of earlier centuries of the southern parts of the country. The site remains as the ruins of Vijayanagara Empire. It was part of the capital of this empire in the 14th century. The major attractions here inter alia include the centuries oldVirupakshaTemple,AchutharayaTemple,HazaraRamaTemple,KrishnaTemple,VittalaTemple, the sacred Tank nearKrishnaTemple, Ganesha Mandapa,UndergroundSivaTemple,AnjaneyaTemple, Elephant Stables, Lotus Mahal, Monolithic Nandi Bull, Tall carved pillars, canals, Aqued... read more