ANET and the Wandoor mangroves

15th April 2017

Continued from here.

Our first visit to the Andaman Islands, thanks to MNS.  After a brief stop at Sippighat in search of Andaman Teals, we arrived on a cloudy sultry morning at ANET - the Andaman & Nicobar Environment Team - Base Camp in Wandoor.

Wandoor is in the southern part of the main south Andaman island.  The station was conceived and set up by Rom Whitaker and Satish Bhaskar and Alok Mullick in the late eighties, and there's a blog that gives details of their vision, the place as it is now, and the Do's and Don'ts that make for interesting reading.  Click here for that link.

Base Director Manish Chandi met us here, and took us through an introduction to the ecology and anthropology of the islands, as well as the work that goes on in ANET.

I was thoroughly fascinated (and filled with chagrin) with Manish's description of the islands, the people, and the attempts of the "outside world" to "deal" with them.  Of the original thirteen indigenous tribes, only four remain in the Andaman islands thanks to these efforts.  I learnt about the Shompen of Nicobar, the Karen families from Myanmar, the post tsunami development and rehabilitation which may not all be as helpful as it seems, and a lot more.

At this point, the clouds opened, and the rain poured down quite literally in buckets, and it was wonderful to sit in the verandah and enjoy the sight, after hot and dry Madras.  I cannot put in words the singing in my heart at that moment.  Rain!  I can quite happily sit and watch it for hours.

The cabins were on stilts, and for our cabin, you went up the stairs, walked around the cabin on an elevated verandah, and then entered this room for four, which was our quarters for the three unique days at ANET.  Arjun took the floor mattress, GP and me the double bed and Sekar on the single.  

The others were in similar digs spread around the central kitchen and dining areas.  Each cabin is named after one of the scientists, and I now have forgotten the name of our scientist/cabin.

The four of us had the use of a toilet and bath, just around the corner, in a manner of speaking.

A RWH pond (the Andaman treepies, drongos and hill mynas hung round the pond too), is the source of freshwater at ANET, and someone would magically fill the large drum in the bathroom, with water every day, and we managed quite beautifully, splitting bath timings into a morning and evening shift!  Of course the stay was made even more unforgettable as we were treated to a Spanish baritone performance every morning!

Andaman Cat Snake (Boiga andamanensis) curled up by the closed thatched window

A torch was essential to walk around at night, but none of us came upon a snake, as i think there were so many of us, and we made such an excited racket that they probably wisely kept away.  Bhanu, who went in August, found a pair of Andaman Cat snakes on the beams in her room!

Bhanu was delighted to see them and in her own words, quickly took out her camera to takes these pictures.

They have vertical pupils which gives them their name, and they are endemic to the Andamans.

..and this bigger  one was on the beams above was the male.

Monto, one of the oldest field staff at ANET expertly caught and removed them from her room.

We birded around the campus, Sivakumar slipped and cracked a rib in the process, Kedar misplaced many a thing, Keerthana and Elumalai kept a watch for the resident scops owl, we saw what we thought was an invasive bullfrog, we actually survived (quite happily) without our phones, and with minimal electricity.  We also learnt the chilling, grisly story of the woman who was killed by a saltwater croc off the coasts of Havelock, which is the reason the Andaman police shoo people off the shoreline as soon as the sun sets.

Our meals were south Indian, fresh and delicious, and we all gathered at mealtimes to exchange stories and post-dinner, to listen to the wonderful, passionate young researchers of ANET.  They were from all over the country and I really enjoyed their company and their spirit.  Dialogues and discussions with these young researchers were an eye opener in several ways. For one, their positive energy, passion and enthusiasm was wonderfully infectious and energising for jaded, urban and middle-aged me.  And there was so much of good interventions and scientific studies that were going on.

The kitchen

The pathway around the campus

There are many other things that Bhanu spotted at ANET.

Fringed Red Eye (Matapa cresta) 

Asiatic Blood Tail (Lathrecista asiatica) dragonfly 

The Andaman Green Bronzeback ( Dendrelaphis andamanensis)

Andaman Clipper (Parthenos sylvia roepstorfii) 

The Andaman Viscount (Tanaecia cibaritis) an endemic.

Bracket fungi

A Stinkhorn mushroom! They smell vile I believe.

White Tiger (Danaus melanippus) 

                                                                    

             

The evening walk through the mangroves

That evening, Manish took us through the mangroves to the north Wandoor beach as a light steady drizzle accompanied us.   He walked barefeet in the gooey, wet mud and warned us of sandflies that we shouldn't itch but ignore!  (Tip:  Sandlflies seem to also not like Odomos - I used it, and didn't get bitten!)

On my return I read that the ANI archipelago has 38 mangrove species!  "38 mangrove species belonging to 12 families and 19 genera, which includes 4 hybrids and 34 species. In other words, about 50% of the global mangrove species" are present in Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Mangroves stabilise and protect the coastal ecosystems, and are therefore especially important for island systems like the ANI.  They provide hard wood, as well as serve as nurseries for several species of fish and snail.  In some way they are important for the health of the reefs as well.

The tsunami tidal waves had come in here and destroyed large portions of the mangrove, which were now in the process of recovery.  The mangroves had protected the interior spaces.

The littoral zone had Andaman Bulletwood (sea mahua) and large Pandanus (kewra).  I didn't know that Pandanus could grow this tall!

The elliptical leaves of Bruguiera?

These leaves are eaten by crabs

Knee roots (Bruguiera species) and pencil roots (Avicenna)

The aerial roots of Rhizophora (mucronata or mange?)

 I thought thats an Avicennia in the foreground, but Manish has corrected it as Cerbera Odallam - this is not a mangrove but grows well in swampy and marshy areas, and is fairly poisonous from what I read.

Crabs feasting on the Pandanus fruit, making for a very carnivorous composition!

The fruits were all over the place, and Manish explained that they were an important local source of  nutrition and food.  Post tsunami, there was replanting of Pandanus underway on the Nicobar islands.

...as were the well fed crabs that pretended to be snails!

The pools of water had mudskippers, tadpoles and other assorted wrigglies.

Lookout the propagation seed to the left

Unidentified flower

If Im not mistaken, a Bruguiera tree.

And then we were on the beach...

It is a sheltered cove on the western coast of south Andamans, and it was low tide with almost no waves

Walking further west, we came upon a sandy beach.  The light was fading fast.

A "Pano" shot of the beach

There were several fallen trees, and there was a wabi sabi beauty and stillness around them.

                                                                                                                               










































































































We returned back to the camp via the village road, and having worked up a good appetite, we fell upon the dinner like a pack of wild dogs!  (I'm sure the ANET staff had not come across such hearty appetites!)

The next morning we were scheduled to go off for the day to Rutland Island, and it was to be an early start, from the Pongi Balu Jetty.

ANET seemed like an idyll, a refuge; Wonder if I could move there...I could be the cook I suppose, or the local mother hen for children's groups.... as the fan whirred ineffectively over the mosquito net that night, and an owl hooted in the distance, these were my wishful thoughts before sleep overcame me.

Through the course of our stay there, besides being completely humbled, awestruck and amazed at the natural beauty of the region, there was so much of learning on animal behaviours and vulnerabilities and the impacts of intervention and human development.

We learnt about how geckos slept at night in order to increase their chances of survival from predation; how there are seagrass meadows where dugongs graze, and their numbers are in peril; coral reef can be resilient, resistant or susceptible and how do we learn to "manage" and maintain the resilient ones that bounce back after catastrophes;  the tsunami impacts were all too plain to see - from geological changes in the lay of the land (quite literally), to destruction of communities and their rebuilding.

ANET is also developing curriculum to help the islanders understand their own ecology and environment via the Treasured Islands series, and working with fishing communities, studying their practices and looking at ways to control over fishing.

May Manish Chandi and his tribe grow, people with a positive outlook, looking to make a difference wherever they are. The only path to sustainable development seems to be to reduce, recycle and reuse.  And it has to start with me.

Chihuly Gardens

It was a rainy Seattle night in March this year, when we visited the Dale Chihuly Gardens, for a dinner if you please.

We were greeted with a glass of champagne, and everything was all posh and beautiful, except that I was in hiking shoes, trousers and a jacket more suited for the great outdoors rather than some posh western do!

You enter the exhibit through a long corridor called the Glasshouse, which is a long corridor, all lit up, with the ceiling made of glass above which is an assorted collection of Chihuly work.  (To my mind, it looked like a glass loft with all the extra pieces of glass sculptures,  Rather clever!)

If you click on the pictures, you will see them in full detail and resolution.

The work on the glass was exquisite, and there were different "series".  This was part of the Basket series (if I remember right), and quite my favourite for elegance subtlety and something I would love to see everyday.  The light  glinted off these containers within containers quite magically.

The lighting was a challenge to my iPhone and my digital camera.

I would love to create Ikebana in these.

The Octopus from the Sealife Room.  Hmm.  The whole room was filled with
kind of grotesque and strongly coloured installations, inspired by sea life
 and the Puget Sound, the literature said.

The Sealife tower in the Sealife Room.  

Ikebana and the Float Boats were a set of two "boats", one was filled with Chihuly's interpretation of Ikebana elements, and the other with Niijima Floats.

The series is attributed to his time In Finland (1995), when he randomly threw glass into the river to see how they would interact with the water.  Local teenage kids picked these up and filled their rowboats with them.  Little did they realise that years later, a woman from india would be looking at the resulting inspiration with a non plussed air.

This is the Ikebana boat with the long lines that look like stems

These were inspired by "the artist's trip to the Japanese island of Niijima and by childhood memories of discovering
Japanese fishing net floats along the beach of Puget Sound".

...Another perspective...

The Venetian glass makers were a source of instruction and inspiration through Chihuly's artistic evolution.  "Chihuly over Venice" was a set of Chandeliers he installed across that city.  Chandeliers

The Chandelier room

The Macchia series - a technique of using an in-between cloudy layer is how I understood it.  the effect was stunning, with the colours so different, on the inner and outer surfaces.

Each piece had a different feel to it, and I loved this series, which looked like flower heads to me.

Ppppies, he could have called them?

And we dined under this!  Dramatic!  I imagine that in the day with a blue sky, the effect would be quite different.

The Garden of Glass - Mille Fiori - inspired by memories of his mother's garden.

Each of the elements in the "garden" were unique.

I wandered out in the drizzle to try and catch a glimpse of the outdoor sculptures.  The Needle towered overhead.

The garden has a large collection of shrubs, trees and plants, but I was unable to make out one from the other, as the lighting was on the glass sculptures, sending the live garden into the shadows.

This piece has travelled widely as part of Chihuly's exhibitions here and there.

The sheer ambition and size of the "sculptures" and this use of glass as architectural art expression was unique to me.

A day visit would probably be very different from a night one, especially the gardens on the outside, which, given the rain we didn't see much of.

As I wandered through, I mused that at one end of the scale of display are the amazing Chola bronzes in the not-so-amazing Bronze Gallery at Chennai, and at the other end was this.  Maximum effect of lighting, space, and display style.

It was cold (by Madras standards) and wet as we left the Gardens and headed back to our hotel.  It was like emerging from an alien world, a science fiction movie, back into the real world with soft colours and textures and the real patter of rain and the wind on my face.

Art with shock and awe, thats how I would describe the Chihuly glass installations.

Uber zindabad I thought as a cab pulled up at the kerb for us, and no it was not an Indian driver but a Chinese!

The Belitung shipwreck and the maritime silk road

15th March 2017

Harlem under snow, as I looked east, the morning after. 

The morning sun lit up the the maze of concrete that is Manhattan.

Down street-side, and Marion Sims seemed to be disapproving of the slushy mess, as we lurched on in the stop-go traffic besides Central Park.

                                                     









We were headed towards the Belitung shipwreck exhibition at the Asia Society.  (Left to our own devices, we would have stayed at home, played with the dog and had chai, but thanks to my dear sis in law we learnt some history, geography, foreign trade and art!)

Where on earth is Belitung and why is the shipwreck important?

Belitung is an Indonesian island, east of Sumatra, not very large, and colonised by the Dutch at some point, with beautiful beaches and coral reefs.  In the 9th century, much before Vasco Da Gama an Arabian  Dhow returning from China to Africa sank in these waters.

The wreck was only discovered in 1998, and the recovery of the cargo resulted in one of the largest collection of Tang dynasty treasures.  It also was clear proof of a maritime trade route - a rival to the inland Silk Route - between China under the Tang dynasty and West Asia, where the Abbasid Caliphate was in power.

More interestingly, the salvage and restoration was undertaken by a private agency called Seabed Explorations, in association with the Indonesian Government, and the western archeological world has sniffed at what they called a "treasure hunter" approach to the wreck and its cargo.  So much so that  the restored artefacts - which included more than 70,000 pieces of Chinese ceramic ware - were forbidden from being exhibited in the US until recently!

If I have understood it right, in 2005, a significant portion of the restored objects were sold for US$32 million to the Govt of Singapore via a holding company, who now loans them for exhibitions across the world.  I just found it amusing that the global flag bearer of capitalism objected to this private enterprise in restoration.

The cargo

The Belitung wreck had cargo from several kilns across China, each of which had their
characteristic look, glaze and designs. The ship was therefore an aggregator, much like the Amazons
of today.

A well preserved ewer, which is said to be based on the metalware of west Asia

Changsha wares were painted with iron and copper oxide based pigments of brown, green and red.  They were hand painted and quite varied, with themes usually being from the natural world.

Characteristic green pigments of the Changsha ware

These large packing jars had an inscription with a year, which has helped date the entire lot of ceramic ware to 826 AD.

Another Changsha kiln ewer - this one with brown pigment.

A variety of bowls from the Changsha kilns, with motifs that had Buddhist significance

With cloud like formations in the painting.

The Gongxian kilns on the other hand specialised on the cobalt blue and white ceramics.  Painting with blue cobalt is believed to have started with the painters in Basra and then was a specialty of Iran.    In what is reminiscent of today's Made in China label, it seems that the potters of Gongxian took the Iranian method of painting with cobalt onto their own ceramics.

These are the earliest Chinese blue and white pottery known

The Yue Kilns to the east of China specialised in a green glaze with subtle floral designs

The Xing Kilns in Hebei province in northern China produced the fines white ceramics, and the three hundred odd white ceramics on the Belitung shipwreck were probably the most expensive of the ceramics.  The exhibition write ups indicated that the wealthy in the Abbasid caliphate highly valued these white wares.

One of the white ware pieces

Besides these ceramics, the shipwreck also contained some gold and silver objects and mirrors.

It was a gem of an exhibition, and one of those things that you get to see because you happen to be in the right place at the right time, and also one that I was more amazed by upon my return and when I read further about it.

As we left, the icing on the cake was Google cardboard VR headsets that gave you a sense of how it looked under the sea!

More on the exhibition here.

It was back on the streets, with graffiti and slush.

Sunday morning ramble at GNP

3rd March 2017

My first nature outing post surgery?  No, I did go birding at the Bird Race in Jan, but this was a longer walk.  GNP,  so close to home and such a lovely little sanctuary.

Bulbuls called from everywhere, and the parakeets screeched overhead as we set off.  A Golden Oriole sang.

Is this the Ceylon Caper - Capparis zeylanica - I wondered?  

Leaves crunched underfoot as we wandered below the Banyan.  A brown breasted flycatcher flitted above.

The root tips caught the morning light and formed a screen in front of my face.

Above, the branches spread in a beautiful tangle

...of which I took several pictures.

The Torchwood Trees (Ixora pavetta) were in bloom everywhere, and there were bees and butterflies all around them.

An Indian Robin flew by as we stopped by one of the ponds.  We startled a wild dog who had come for a drink.  He watched us warily as he lapped up, thirstily. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.