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Tag: India

Grand sands (#25 in series: DIY housing, Thar Desert)

Published January 9, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#25 in series: DIY housing, Thar Desert)

 

 

As last updated on 02 January 2025, on www.WA.gov.au:

If you are thinking about owner-building your own home or small commercial building, you will need to have been granted owner-builder approval from the Building Services Board before you can be granted a building permit from your local government authority.

Indian bureaucracy is globally-notorious, but in at least some parts of Rajasthan, the “DIY housing sector” is subject to very much less “regulation” than is Western Australia’s.

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Grand sands (#24 in series: Thar Desert’s underground “celebrity”)

Published January 8, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#24 in series: Thar Desert’s underground “celebrity”)

 

The mammalian world’s biggest family – the rodents – includes six genera which (collectively) contain at least 110 living species of “gerbil”

Some of them – on their own turf, at least – are more commonly known as “jirds”.

Jirds are members of the genus Meriones.

As is generally true of gerbils, jirds live in deserts, and other “arid” or “semi-arid” places.

Unsurprisingly, most are nocturnal; but not the Indian desert jird, Meriones hurrianae.

One Indian blogger has described this post’s highly atypical hero as the tiny musketeer of Rajasthan’s Thar Desert.

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Grand sands (#23 in series: “The Great Indian Desert”)

Published January 7, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#23 in series: “The Great Indian Desert”)

 

The Thar Desert’s other name accords with reality: it is India’s biggest desert, although 15% of it is in Pakistan.

Most of it – around 60% – is in Rajasthan; the Thar Desert occupies a little more than 60% of India’s largest state, by area

According to most sources, around 40% of Rajasthan’s human population live within the Thar Desert.

Rajasthan is far from India’s most populous state, but it is currently home to more than 80 million humans.

Unsurprisingly,  the Thar Desert is “our” planet’s most densely populated desert, by a large margin.

It is also remarkably rich in wildlife.

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The greatest percussionist, period? Vale Zakir Hussain (1951-2024)

Published December 18, 2024 by Pelidoug

The greatest percussionist, period? Vale Zakir Hussain (1951-2024)

 

I do not believe in the notion that any single player/composer/writer/whatever kind of artist is – or ever was the best.

That said, Zakir Hussain was undoubtedly the most influential, most eclectically-inclined, and most ubiquitous hand-drummer/percussionist in human history.

(Jim McGuire took the photo of him)

Zakir Hussain died on Monday, in his adoptive home city of San Francisco.

He was born 73 years earlier,  in what was then Bombay, now Mumbai.

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“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (#21 in series)

Published October 18, 2024 by Pelidoug

“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (#21 in series)

 

At 5.36pm on 04 May 2024, we were on board a barge, in front of “our” houseboat.

We were about to head out into the quiet, unpopulated part of Dal Lake, well away from houses and houseboats.

Late afternoon light was flattering the houseboats that were directly opposite “ours”.

A few minutes later MV Bulbul (pictured in immediately-preceding post) would fire up, and begin to tow us, very slowly, toward the lake’s more “open” waters.

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