In addition to short trips for conferences and seminars to Rome,
Acuto
(Italy), England and other places, my major trips for the year began in
February with a
nine-day pilgrimage to the Bahá'í Holy Places in and around Haifa,
Israel, my first visit since 1972 (see separate page). While in Prague
in late May for a
meeting on our values-based indicators project, the group took a little
time to visit the gardens of Prague Castle. From there I went
immediately
for a week to India with a chance to spend three days in a remote
village. In June I had another trip to Brighton (UK) and in July I
spent two weeks with my brother Greg and his family in Bulgaria, mostly
on the Black Sea coast. Most of August I shall be in Quebec visiting my
son Alex and his family.
For my wonderful pilgrimage to Haifa and Akka in February, see the separate page on my Pilgrimage.
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Prague Castle
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Main gate
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A gothic church is inside the castle walls
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Behind the castle are beautiful castle gardens
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There is a royal gymnasium for sports, and falcons for falconry
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The changing of the guard, a view of Prague from the castle, and
our group for the ESD indicators project
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Streets of Prague
I spent a week in India to teach the first module in a Certificate of
Advanced Studies in Sustainable Development and the Role of Technology,
organized jointly by EPFL (the University of Technology in Lausanne)
and the Indian Institute of Science in Banglore (the Tata Institute).
We took the students for three days to live in rural villages, to see
the reality of rural life and the challenges of technology transfer. I
was fortunate to go with a group to the village of C.K. Pura, 170 km
from Bangalore in Karnataka State, where our host, P.R. Sheshagiri Rao,
is an environmental scientist who returned to his village 20 years ago
to work on the problems of rural India while maintaining an
international scientific career. He was able to introduce our
participants to many people representing the major dimensions of
village life.
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Indian Institute of Science, main building and park-like campus
C.K. Pura Village, Karnataka State
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Even the remote areas have towers for mobile phones. The
students met a variety of villagers
Water is the big problem in this drought-prone region. When the village
was established by Mr. Rao's ancestor 150 years ago, earthworks and
dams were built around the village to store water, but with agriculture
spreading up the watershed, there is less runoff and the "tanks" are
mostly empty. Water must be pumped from the water table more than 100
meters down, but electricity is available only a few hours a day.
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Even close to the dam, reservoirs are low. An expensive project
to remove silt behind the dam failed to increase the water available.
Agriculture has been dominated by groundnuts (peanuts) as a cash crop
for oil production, but its susceptability to drought means that
frequent crop failures drive the farmers deeper into debt. Mr. Rao and
his team are researching alternatives like agroforestry.
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Rao house and compound
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Gateway through the wall of the fortified compound; entrance to
Mr. Rao's house
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Every house has a Hindu shrine inside and often outside, and
symbols drawn in chalk on the threshold
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The main room of the old house has a traditional wooden ceiling
and four central posts
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Behind the house are stable for buffalo; granite slabs are
widely used for fencing
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The group with our guides and interpreters; Mr. Rao explaining
his soil moisture monitoring programme; Mrs. Rao
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We slept on the floor in a house across the street. The students
worked hard preparing their assessments of village life
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At the end of our stay, our group thanked the Rao family and our
guides and interpreters
In another nearby village, a tribal group of shepherds migrate annually
in search of fodder, using mobile phones to find the next farm to graze
their sheep (farmers like this because it fertilizes their fields).
The trip back to Bangalore on difficult rural roads provided glimpses
of the Indian countryside
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In July I joined my brother Greg and his family in Blagoevgrad,
Bulgaria, and drove across Bulgaria to spend 10 days in his apartment
in St. Vlas on the Black Sea coast north of Burgas. The apartment is in
The Garden of Eden, a hotel
resort complex on the beach with three restaurants, six swimming pools,
and a market just below their apartment. Apart from some work repairing
and finishing the apartment, most of the time we spent on the beach or
in one of the resort swimming pools. I often watched the kids while
Greg and Emi shopped to finish equiping the apartment. My nieces
and nephew are good swimmers, so they spent a lot of time in the water,
or trying to stand upright on an air mattress which I held for them. In
the evening we played games or watched old films.
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The building with their apartment and an indoor pool, the view from their balcony, and the main pool and hotel restaurant
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Greg, Emi and the kids going down to the beach for sun, sand and swim
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Greg, Emi and the children at the moderately crowded beach
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The twins: Joyce getting a tan, and Gregory preparing to swim
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Joyce, Gregory and Mina with their air mattresses, and Emi with the children
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The beach in front of the resort, with its fish restaurant and undeveloped coastline beyond