Vote for 'Adivasi Community Preschool'

There are still two more days to vote in this year's Click About It international photography competition, in partnership with OxFam. Your humble blogger is in the running, with an exhibit called Adivasi Community Preschool.

Click here to see my entry, all entries and more information about the contest. Public voting ends October 3, after which the contest's own judges weigh in. The winner is announced October 12.


[Update Oct 12: The winners have been announced and can be found here.]

Shrine of the Holy Mother in Dantolingi

In Dantolingi in northern Ganjam district, near the border of Kandhamal, stands a hilltop shrine to the Holy Mother Mary. Legend has it that an elderly Hindu woman was returning home over the hill with a load of firewood, when she became ill and faint. The Virgin Mary appeared to her in a vision and led her to a spring which had never flowed before. The woman drank and regained her strength. The Roman Catholic Church investigated the miracle and consecrated the site of the spring. Each year since, on February 11, thousands of Christian pilgrims visit Dantolingi and climb the hill to pray at the shrine and wash in the spring, which is believed to have remedial powers.

Click here to view the full photo gallery

Tibetan Monastery of Chandragiri

In 1963, about 600 Tibetan refugees arrived in the southwestern Orissa hill country of Gajapati district, in a fertile valley known as Chandragiri. It seems an unlikely spot to run into Tibetans, what with our being a long thousand kilometres from Tibet, as the kingfisher flies.  

Click here to view the full photo gallery.

Those first refugees arrived here in the early 1960s after fleeing into exile with the Dalai Lama, following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959. The Indian government resettlement program for refugees established a number of camps around India; today the refugees number between 110,000 and 120,000 all over the country. 

Chilika Lake

Chilika is the largest brackish water lake in Asia, measuring about 1000 square kilometres. The NGO I’ve been working with, PREM, supports development in 153 villages around and nearby the lake, where the population is mostly comprised of Fisher People communities whose social status is essentially equivalent to Dalit (formerly “Untouchables”). 

Himalaya Redux

Khangchedzonga (8598m; 28,200ft), south face from Thangsing valley, 12 Oct 2010.
To view full photo gallery click here.

After the Catch

The seaside town of Gopalpur is--as regular followers of this blog will guess--becoming a regular weekend getaway for us. Morning walks on the beach have an innate, therapeutic value not easy to define but not difficult to imagine. On a recent excursion, our morning walk took us past a fisherfolk village, not long after the men had returned from the sea with the day's catch for the market, where boats dried on the sand, crows and dogs picked over scraps, and the men and women set about repairing vessels and nets and gear in the perpetual cycle of life by the sea.

{Click here to see the full gallery of 17 photos}