Butterfly Sanctuary
The Banteay Srey Butterfly Center is the largest netted butterfly enclosure in SE Asia. Big beautiful butterflies are all over Angkor but it’s great to see them in a garden setting where they’re fluttering from flower to flower. If you’re ever on the road from Siem Reap to Banteay Srey, it’s definitely worth a stop.
Rainbow Body
One of the most fascinating aspects of Tibetan Buddhism the way it uses visual arts to represent complex Tantric concepts. This can be traced back to the spread of Buddhism in Tibet in the 8th century by Guru Padmasambhava, who incorporated deities and practices from Tibet’s ancient, animistic Bön religion and magical rites and mantras [...]
Two Fès Medersas
The medersas of Bou Inania and el-Attarine are two of the most impressive sights of Fès, Morocco’s spiritual and cultural capital. Medersas are schools of religious study and are traditionally closed to non-Muslims, as are most mosques, but these two have been restored and converted into museums. Bou Inania has an attached mosque and minaret, [...]
Tropical Color
Kerala presents a whole new color palette for me. Purples and oranges. Blues and yellows. Greens and reds. It’s fabulous.
Decayed Color
Once I started with these images it became a little obsessive for awhile. The humidity of south India creates some fantastic displays of decay on the walls here. Nothing too special, just a little diversion!
Diwali Crowds
An estimated million or more people visited The Golden Temple at Amritsar on Diwali. I’d never photographed crowds like this before and really enjoyed the energy and the new visual challenges/opportunities it presented. At some point the masses just became an abstraction of movement and colors. The photo above was outside the ladies room.
Sadhus and Pilgrims
The Sikhs welcome all faiths to The Golden Temple. Anyone can eat and sleep there, as long as they show appropriate respect to their religion, which is easy to do (no drugs or alcohol, no shoes, and no uncovered heads inside the temple). Droves of Hindu sadhus and pilgrims were at the temple when I [...]
Youth in Red + Green
How can you not love these faces??? This is a huge reason why I love it so much here. I ended up taking many pictures of the young Zanskarpas among the greens, source of life…
Sand Mandala
Today I went to check out the creation of a sand mandala at Thiksey Monastery. When I arrived at 8:30 this morning, about six monks were working on it and the middle part was already done. I stayed with them until 4:30. They fed me and talked with me and I tried not to get [...]
