Allie makes things (in India)

Agra in particular was so dense with beautiful surface decoration that I ended up with many pictures of nothing but patterns. Here are a few of my favorites; there are more in this flickr set too.

This past weekend (my second-to-last in India!) I finally made it to one of the places in Bangalore I’ve been meaning to go this whole time: the Lalbagh botanical garden. It is huge and lovely and green, though also pretty happening on the weekend. Still a relaxing place to spend a few hours, though, despite the occasional and still inexplicable-to-me requests for my participation in group photos with random strangers.

This lovely glass house is modeled on an earlier version of the Crystal Palace in London.

There is a huge lake in the center of the park, surrounded by these orange-flowering trees with mysterious seed pods. (I wish I had learned more of the names for all of this unfamiliar flora and fauna …)

This slightly kitschy goddess was part of the unfortunately neglected Japanese garden.

When I was in Coorg, in addition to soaking in all of the green everywhere, we visited the Namdroling Nyingmapa Monastery, home to 5000 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns. (I am shocked to find out there were that many residents–I would have guessed more like 500–but that’s what their website says …)

It was absolutely worth the trip. The architecture was amazing, and every surface inside the temple spaces was covered in amazingly intricate paintings.

The atmosphere inside of the temple was weirdly casual, though. When I visited temples in Japan it generally felt like an occasion for Good Behavior, but here there were huge crowds of people milling around and small kids gone amok, with lots of flash photography and loud conversations. I might have enjoyed a little more quiet just to better appreciate all of the completely amazing things inside, though it was really too much to absorb anyway.

These are three different incarnations of Buddha. (As far as I can tell from digging around on the internet, this temple is only ten years old!)

I wasn’t really photographically equipped for getting good pictures of the paintings, but there were hundreds of these and they were all pretty incredible. At one point I saw some young monks who had been assigned to study some of them.

The first day of my tour of North India was a whirlwind trip around Delhi. These are some of the highlights:

Jama Masjid, a gigantic and beautiful mosque in Old Delhi, built during the 17th century. (My dad took that picture above, one of my favorites from the whole trip.)

The mosque is in the neighborhood of a market area called Chadni Chowk, which was seemingly endless narrow alleyways packed with tiny shops. Each street had a different specialty: textiles, books, paper goods, jewelry. This photo is of one of the wider streets.

In New Delhi was the Hindu Laxminarayan Temple, dedicated to Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) and her consort Vishnu.

The India Gate is a war memorial dedicated to Indian soldiers who died in World War I.

Rajghat was the site of Gandhi’s cremation (which is what everyone in this photograph is circling around). It is surrounded by a beautiful park and memorials of other important figures.

I found this crazy pony in a shop today (no work thanks to the elections!) and I currently think he is the coolest thing ever. Since I’m guessing a large portion of my readership is of the textiles- and craft-appreciating sort, I thought you might like to see him too.

The variety of incredible handicrafts you can find in India is completely mind boggling, and I have been trying to collect things I really love through all of my travels this year, despite not being the most enthusiastic shopper. (I also find the hard-sell approach of most salespeople incredibly exhausting. I’ll never be much of a bargainer, either.)

The pony also has a smaller elephant buddy.

This is a handloom silk dupatta–a little too wide and long and stiff to wear as a Western-style scarf, but I think the colors are amazing.

An appliqued bedspread I picked up in Jaipur. It is a double-layered fabric: the top layer is opaque cotton, which is cut away in the patterned areas to expose the sheer fabric underneath.

Blockprints from Jaipur too–one of the specialties of the region.

This Ganesha puppet was from this amazing crafts fair in Bangalore, so I’m not sure where it was made originally; couldn’t talk to the craftspeople about it very well. But he’s big (easily 18 or 20 inches) and amazingly intricate, made of parchment with tiny cut holes and painted on both sides. His legs are articulated, too.

I got this bell from the same fair, from someone who I think was from Chhattisgarh. They’re made for livestock; this one is about the size of my hand. I guess the pleasure of this is more auditory than visual (it has a beautiful low deep ring, not tinny at all), but I think the patina on it is really lovely too.

These photos are all from a weekend trip I took to Goa in January. This was the most vacation-like of every trip I have taken–no sightseeing, just lots of time to watch the ocean and relax. (Those pink huts down there are from the place where we stayed.)

Last October I was in Mysore for part of the ten-day festival Navratri and/or Dasara. Mysore is known for their spectacular Dasara parade (the best one in India, supposedly) … but sadly I had to work that day, so I could only go to Mysore the day before and look longingly at the rows of empty folding chairs and the elephants hanging out in their pen waiting for their moment of glory the next day.

However, the day I visited Mysore was Ayudha Puja, which literally means “worship of weapons” but is now a day to worship and appreciate all of the tools you use to earn a living and in your daily life. Nearly every vehicle was decked out with flower garlands and pigment and giant banana leaves. The fire truck above is not even close to the most elaborate one I saw.

They also had a puja at work, and I came in the next day to a freshly blessed computer workstation and scanner, complete with flowers strewn about.

Madikeri is one of (the?) major town in Kodagu, and that’s where I stayed when I visited. This is the view from the porch of my homestay there. The homestay was not as interesting as I might have expected, though we stayed in what was clearly a grown daughter’s old room, with dolls and awkward paintings and old class photographs. Then again I didn’t much besides sleep there, since there was a lot of sightseeing to do, so who knows. (I also spent a night at a cabin on a coffee plantation, which was pretty cool–photos and stories from that coming in a different post.)

I found this view and this waterfall within the first twenty minutes in the car to our first stop, which blew my mind a little. The waterfall was just on the side of the road! (Being able to afford hiring a driver for trips is one of the nice things about traveling in India, because then I just stare out the window the entire time with no worries.)

In October I spent a long weekend in Kodagu (Coorg), a district in the western part of Karnataka. The countryside and forests there are mindbogglingly beautiful, particularly after weeks of city life. This particular place was my favorite of the trip. After passing a temple set at the foot of a few unbelievably green hills, we crossed a suspension bridge (helpfully labelled “FOREST” in iron lettering) and climbed a long flight of stone stairs.

This is what was at the top: Irupu Falls, probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

Hindu legend says that Rama’s brother created the waterfall for drinking water while they were searching for Rama’s wife Sita.

You can climb all over the rocks and go swimming in the water, which completely amazed me. Because of the waterfall’s association with Rama, bathing in the water is supposed to cleanse you of sins.

And just to add to the over-the-top beauty of the place, there are also amazing blue butterflies everywhere.

The color-experience of India must have been completely different before the invention of artificial pigments. (Mauve was the first, in the 1850s, so it wasn’t that long ago.) I don’t think the hyper-saturation of paint and clothing that seems so characteristic now could have been possible.

I find capturing the intense colors of clothing really difficult–extremely satisfying to view in person, but never the same captured by a camera. I have had better luck with buildings. Also I am pretty shy about photographing people, and I know architecture won’t mind.

The color combinations achieved by the bougainvillea that grow all over the campus at work made me wonder about nature’s influence on this sense of color, despite how crazy it can seem. (Of course, these photos I’ve used from flickr to illustrate my point are from Australia and Arizona, so who knows.)

(The quote in the title is from interior designer David Hicks. One of many cool things I have found in the huge quantities of interiors magazines at work. And for another tangent, I am loving this list of color names on Wikipedia, with matching color chips.)