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Cow lifting game
What to do when a cow is lying down in the middle of the path, blocking the way through and in no way willing to get up and move? Such cow stubbornness is rare but here it happened. Only combined forces – and lots of fun – could bring help. And only then this patiently…
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Bhang
Yes, it grows in the wild in the Kumaon hills. I’m talking about the Cannabis sativa, the Indian hemp plant. The seeds get blown in the wind or are taken and dropped by birds and so, all of a sudden, you can have some hemp plants growing in your garden. Local farmers may – unofficially…
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Tap tap!
That is what you hear in the pine forest when the man who collects the resin from the trees fixes the cone back on the stem. Then he moves to the next tree, empties the cone, puts it back, tap tap, and he goes on to the next. The resin is used for making turpentine.…
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Like mother, like daughter
Human life may have changed in many respects since prehistoric times, but at a certain level, the level of basic needs for the organism to survive, we are still the same, and not much different from other animals for that matter. We need food to eat, we need water to drink. For millions of people…
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Lakhudiyar
Already in prehistory humans must have been enchanted by the natural beauty of the Kumaon hills. They have left their traces, as we can see for example in the rock shelter the board on the photo speaks so nicely about. Lakhudiyar can be found between present day Almora and Jageshwar. It looks as if the…
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The Kumaon hills
66 % of the world’s population will live and work in cities by 2050. In India too, rapid urbanization is a continuing trend. In the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand where I spend most of my time when in India, I see the other side of this drift to the towns and cities: a steady exodus from the…
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Venice upside down
It is always a nice sight, the clotheslines with clean laundry tightened between opposite houses across narrow streets in the old towns of southern Europe. But may we ask you to be a bit more thoughtful next time, dear washerwoman (or man), when hanging your beautiful towels to dry in the attractive contre jour light…
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Through the fjord with a bang
While the Maori section of the museum in Okains Bay offered an interesting picture of Maori traditional craft and culture, the colonial section looked a bit like a junk shop, a ‘brocante’, with a nostalgic making mishmash of early 20th century objects brought along by the white settlers. The painted drum in the picture, with…
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Coffee time!
The background of the impressive Maori figure on the painting we recognize as Okains Bay, the pristine bay that I showed you on this blog two weeks ago. Behind the Maori’s back we see two waka (traditional Maori canoes) pulled up on the beach. The first Maoris that came to New Zealand over a thousand…
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Okains Bay
Okains Bay is not just a magnificent bay on New Zealand’s South Island (see last week’s post). It is also the place of an old Maori settlement with still a considerable percentage of Maori population to this date. The photo shows the inside of the Whaakata, a traditional meeting house, now part of the Maori…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 