BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Excellence in horsemanship has always been associated with the people of Mongolia. It’s a tradition that goes back to the times of Genghis Khan, the great unifier of Mongolia. Competition on horseback is part of the annual Naadam Festival, which also celebrates wrestling and archery. Picking up objects from the ground while your horse is at a full run is not easy. Riders compete to pick up the most objects on a galloping horse at a local Naadam festival, held in the Yol Valley in the Gobi desert.
There’s a painful beauty in the collapse of our global climate. This waterfall represents a catastrophic failure of our species to act in the face of the greatest threat we have ever encountered. Yet amid the silent solitude of the Arctic, the sound of melted water cascading from this void in the ice filled me with ironic serenity. Change begins with us-if we can each take just one step to reduce our impact today, however great or small, we will be on the path to restoration.
In Meghalaya, India, a mountain tribe called Khasi has been practicing the concept of bioengineering for centuries. Their ancestors started building these living root bridges so that they could traverse the turbulent rivers during the monsoon.
Inhabiting one of the wettest places on the planet, these tribes have ingeniously developed a way to use rubber plants (Ficus elastica) to make the bridges. They can survive for hundreds of years and get stronger with age. There are an estimated hundred such bridges spread across the hills of Meghalaya, but most are isolated and very little is known about them.
Compiled by SZ