In the Blue City

Over the last 2 days I've been exploring the city of Jodhpur in Rajasthan along with a large group - 40 students and 4 faculty colleagues - from the Balwant Seth School of Architecture, Mumbai. 

This is my first visit to the famed Blue City, besides seeing most of the popular sights of the city the students will be measure drawing a small group of house and it's adjoining streets near the Padamsar Talab just west of the imposing Mehrangarh fort. 

Here's a whole bunch of photos from the area that we've been studying: 

View of the Blue city from the Mehrangarh fort

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The imposing Mehrangarh fort in the background

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a details of one of the houses that the students are drawing up.

Over the next few post I'll cover other parts of this city before moving beyond it's borders towards the Desert town of Jaisalmer.

Happy 2011!

New year fireworks on the Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Wish you all a great year ahead!

Weekend in Daman

Went to the tiny former Portuguese enclave of Daman in the Indian state of Gujarat* with office colleagues for a quick weekend trip.

Here's a few photos of some of the Portuguese structures that dot the city -
The smaller city fort known as Nani Daman

Above the main fort of the city known as Moti Daman,
the next 7 photos are of structures within this fort....

The old lighthouse at the seaward edge of Moti Daman

The beautiful ruins of a Dominican Monastery

Church of Bom Jesus, with its richly carved doorway and the highly decorated interiors.The above and below photos are from the inside the Lady of Rosary Church (which is just next to the other church) has very elaborate carved statues and grand paneling done in an interesting blend of Gothic and Byzantine aesthetics.And to end this post here's a few photos from the city's famous (but horribly dirty) Devka Beach
* Technically Daman is a union territory of India and not part of Gujarat, but for all practical reasons its too small to exist on its own and is a part of Gujarat.

'Happy Marriage' in Chennai

Spend yesterday at a dear friend's wedding in Chennai and I had no idea that it was going to be an awesome (big fat) Tamil wedding ...

The guy who got married - Arasu - is my one of my oldest friends .. in fact we studied from kindergarten to the end of high school together in Dubai... and it was great to go for his wedding ..


Here's a few photos from the wedding..

Starting with a couple of photos of the wedding hall:

....as expected the gods were present to look over the events of the days ..

.....but I was completely unprepared for a freaking elephant attending the wedding !!!

... the elephant however was kind enough to give blessings to everyone !!!

Like most wedding in India the main reason to attend here too was the feast - some Great South Indian food in this case..
...then there was a lot of music which was oddly kinder to my eyes than to the ears... :-)And I'll end this post with an image of people lining up for their turn to go up on stage to wish the newly weds a 'Happy marriage' ...

Ming tombs + Great wall

Today we took a day trip to the outskirts of the city of Beijing to see the famed Ming Tombs and the Great Wall of China. 

Here's a few photos from the two world heritage sites, starting with the Ming tombs :

The Ming tombs is a huge site where 13 Ming Dynasty Emperors were buried in their individual complexes with elaborate pavilions and gardens.

The sequence of spaces/gardens reminded me a lot of the Mughal tomb complexes found in the Indian sun-continent.

Moving on further - here's some photos from the Great Wall 
(this is the Badaling section of the Wall)

The way in which this massive stone wall snakes along the contours of this beautiful landscape is really impressive.

As you can imagine the wall being one of the most popular destination for both local and foreign tourists was super crowded and I had to spend a lot of time and effort in trying to capture these photos that make them look almost empty :-)