Investigating India 2024: Collected Articles
Here’s a collection of all the articles from my 2024 sojourn to India, touching on subjects from Mumbai’s flamingoes to the record Delhi heatwave to human-elephant coexistence to a giant solar farm! Regular The Weekly Anthropocene newsletters will now resume. Thanks for your support!
Investigating India #1: First Impressions
First Impressions The first thing I saw from Indian soil was an array of solar panels, visible from the window of my just-landed plane in Delhi (I had found cheap tickets to Delhi and would take a transfer flight to Mumbai), The airports’ aesthetic was a very familiar “globalized capitalism” one, with smooth minimalist design, “blobjects,” and a mall-like food court near the departure gates, but even in this homogenized hub, the content was becoming distinctly unfamiliar to me, redolent of rapidly industrializing and increasingly prosperous India
The Banyan Tree of Aarey, the Kanheri Caves, and the WCS Macaque Project
This is the second of my live dispatches from Anthropocene field reporting in India, chronicling my travel and research in this incredible subcontinent. Here’s an embed link to the first.
An Afternoon with Dr. Rashneh Pardiwala, Zoroastrian Ecologist
Dr. Rashneh Pardiwala is the founder and director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education (CERE), a Mumbai-based environmental organization highly active in the fields of urban afforestation, solar electrification, rainwater harvesting, environmental education, carbon management systems and more. Dr. Pardiwala is also a member of the Zoroastrian Parsi community, an ancient religious minority who are the custodians of the Doongerwadi Forest of Mumbai, home to the
A Hike Through The Wild Zone of Sanjay Gandhi National Park
On the morning of May 7, 2024, after a hectic first few days in Mumbai, I woke up to my phone alarm at 5:30 AM in the hostel I’d reserved in the Marol Maroshi neighborhood. After several false starts and a flurry of WhatsApp messages, I had successfully booked a guided hike to the highest point of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and I was incredibly excited to get started.
The Flamingos of Navi Mumbai
After the Sanjay Gandhi National Park hike, I spent two days essentially “crashing,” recovering from a series of thrilling but hectically eventful days by sleeping in my hostel for long periods and eating at a few local restaurants and cafes in the Marol Maroshi neighborhood. Thus refreshed, I woke up early again on Friday May 10
Amidst the Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park
The rapid global acceleration of the renewables revolution is, in this writer’s opinion, perhaps the single most civilizationally important development of the 2020s to date (right up there with mRNA vaccines). Though displaced from the headlines by politics, war, and cultural drama, the world is increasingly powered by clean energy. A recent report from pioneering think tank Ember
The Rocketeers and Reformists of Mysore
After visiting the Pavagada solar park, I spent the afternoon of May 15th through the dawn of the 20th in and around the city of Mysuru (historically known as Mysore) writing several articles and exploring local historical sites. The fascinating history of Mysore really deserves a quick summary to give context to my sojourn there, so here goes!
Nagarahole: An Exemplar of Conservation
On the morning of May 20th, I set out from Mysore to the JLR Kings Sanctuary, an eco-lodge a stone’s throw from the edge of Nagarahole National Park and Tiger Reserve. Once a hunting preserve of the Wodeyar dynasty, Nagarahole has become one of the premier protected areas in Asia, with some of the highest-density tiger, Asian elephant, and wild gaur populations in the world. It’s also been a crucible of conservation innovation: Dr. Ullas Karanth, renowned conservationist and father of current
Agents of Coexistence: A Day In the Field with the CWS Wild Seve Program
May 21, 2024 was a thrillingly hectic day. I had hardly returned from the morning safari, the last experience included with my stay at the JLR Kings Sanctuary, when I met up with a team from the Centre for Wildlife Studies. This was the organization where Dr. Krithi Karanth was CEO, which I’d been fascinated by since I’d
The Hottest Day in Delhi's History: My Final Days in India
After leaving the extraordinarily biodiverse Nagarahole-Bandipur landscape in the southern state of Karnataka, I struck out for the North, catching a fourteen-hour overnight train from Mysuru to Hyderabad on May 22-23. The next two days were occupied by a flying visit to Hyderabad (former throne city of diamond-rich Golconda and today’s capital of the Telugu-speaking Telangana state) during which I had just enough time to finish an article, try the city’s famous biryani
Hi Sam,
Have you been to the north-east part of India? The saying goes, "if you haven't seen north-east, you haven't seen India.
I'm from the north-east and would welcome you to explore that part of India.
Best,
Angshuman
Thanks so much for doing this! Now I can have one-stop reading of the Best Travel Journal of 2024 award winner (IMHO). You are an amalgam of some of the best pen and paper travel writers I know of with a basic kindness, optimism, discerning eye and expressivity all your own. I hope you travel to Japan or Korea and produce another of these!