WELCOME TO MY BLOG.

I've always had an interest in gardens and in the natural world. I soon realized that these were more than just flowers to me, but people, places, pictures, history, thoughts...
Starting from a detail seen during one of my visits, unexpected worlds come out, sometimes turned to the past, others to the future.

Travel in a Garden invites you to discover them.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Clouds in Bikaner

Yesterday, I read this tweet by Robert Macfarlane‏: 

@RobGMacfarlane  "Forty names for clouds": remarkable photo-essay by @AratiKumarRao on language & land in the Thar Desert, NW India


I clicked on the link of the article and I was there.
I was again in India, in the Thar Desert, in the city of Bikaner, in the Junagarh Fort, in a room called Badal Mahal whose walls and ceiling are painted with rain-bearing clouds and lightings. 

A room, they said, decorated to show the children of the royal family what a storm was like. To prepare them, mist was sprayed from an opening in the wall and metal plates beaten, outside the room, to mimic the threatening sound of the thunder. 

Because children did not know rain and clouds as they seldom come in the Thar Desert.


I wonder if even these swollen rain clouds painted on the walls have a name like those in the sky beyond the ramparts and the city. 






Photos:

TravelinaGarden, Jaisalmer/Bikaner, India, August 2010

Further reading:
Arati Kumar-Rao, Forty Names Of Clouds,
http://peepli.org/stories/names-of-clouds/

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