My first travel in 2012 was unplanned, to attend the funeral of my
father-in-law in Plomodiern, Brittany, France, in early January. I then
had trips every week from late February to the end of March. First was
a week-long Bahá'í winter camp in the Alpine village of La Chapelle
d'Abondance, France. Then I flew for two weeks to India to accompany a
class on management of development projects (MaDePro) organized by the Federal
Technical University of Lausanne and the Indian Institute of Science in
Bangalore. After 5 days in Geneva, I was off to Berlin for 5 days for
the PERL International Conference where I gave two papers. There was a
3-day break before 5 days in London for the Planet Under Pressure 2012
conference where I had 4 papers in different sessions, followed
immediately by a day in Leysan in the Swiss Valais to give two
workshops at an AIESEC national conference. I had a week to catch up
before going for two weeks to Bulgaria to visit my brother and his
family (but I forgot to take my camera).
Claude
Caillard 
25
April 1916 - 2 January 2012
My father-in-law, Claude Caillard, passed away on 2 January at the age
of 95. Most of his 8 children, 19 grandchildren and 18
great-grandchildren and assorted spouses and friends gathered in his
village of Plomodiern, in the west of Brittany, for his funeral and the
commemoration of his life that followed. The son of two actors from the
silent film era in France, most of his career was with Radio- and
Tele-Luxembourg, but his love was the sea and he built himself a
15-meter steel ketch which he sailed after retirement down to Dakar,
across to Rio, up through the Caribbean, and back to Brittany. His
passing brought the Caillard clan together,
and allowed me to catch up with many in-laws, nieces and nephews.
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Family gathering at Gorré Rible after the funeral
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My daughter Agnés with cousins Berangère and Camille; Madeleine,
Emmanuel and Lawrence
LA
CHAPELLE D'ABONDANCE, FRANCE
On 19-24 February there was a Bahá'í Winter Camp in the alpine ski
resort of La Chapelle d'Abondance, France, a couple of hours from
Geneva, with 60 participants. The theme was the example of
'Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, on the
centenary of his visit to the West after 40 years in prison in
Palestine. I taught courses on his social and economic teachings, and
his description of the qualities required in political leaders and the
learned. There were also music and crafts workshops, and time in the
early afternoon for winter sports. Since I had not skied for 18 years,
I decided to try snowshoes, and hiked in the snow on various trails up
the steep valley sides around the village.
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Looking down and up the valley of Abundance and the trail above the hamlet
Ville de Nant
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Me on snowshoes, and La Cascade, a waterfall frozen in winter
because of the extreme cold this year
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Views of the mountains around the valley, and looking down the
trail
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Views through the trees, the winter sun, and the Chalet Olinga
where the Bahá'í camp was held
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It was a perfect way to get some exercise, fresh air, and some
sun in preparation for my trip to India immediately after
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Views across the valley
This was my second visit to Chennakeshavapura (CKPura), a village 170 km northwest of Bangalore
in Karnataka State, south India (see 2010).
We accompanied the EPFL/Indian Institute of Science course on
Management of Development Projects. The 26 course
participants, experienced professionals wanting to improve their
project management skills, spent a week in this rural village
to plan useful projects like reforestation around the irrigation
reservoir, adapting rain-fed agriculture to climate change, developing
veterinary telemedecine for local herders, and
improving the electricity supply for local water pumps. For photographs
of the course and its participants, see the separate page on MaDePro.
This page reports on the countryside, towns and cultural monuments
typical of this part of India.
During the 4 hour bus trip to the village, we stopped in Lepakshi to
visit one of the most important Hindu temples in that part of India,
including the largest sculpture in India of a bull carved from a single
boulder, located where the outer wall of the temple used to be.
LEPAKSH HINDU TEMPLE
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Giant carved bull facing the temple on the other side of the village
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The temple entrance is ornately carved in hard granite, as is the temple interior
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The outer temple wall is lined with cloisters where pilgrims stayed while visiting the temple
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In the centre is a 7-headed cobra guarding a sacred stone
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The cobra, and an elephant god whose transport is a rat
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The unfinished back part of the temple has many carved columns.
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Work on the temple stopped when the king had the eyes of the temple benefactor, the minister of finance, plucked out.
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Each sculpture depicted a different god
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Our guide, the head priest, showed us a stone footprint that
always has water in it, and carved depressions where the sculptors ate
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Before the entrance to the innermost temple where the monks
officiate, there is a columned space for dancing, with sculptures of
dancing
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The ceiling of the inner temple was decorated with beautiful paintings of court love hundreds of years ago
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Ceiling paintings
C.K.PURA
The village of C.K.Pura is a small agricultural village with
several casts and a muslim minority, adjacent to a large reservoir
(tank), part of an extensive system for water retension and groundwater
recharge during the rainy season. Our host is the village chief and
descendant of the founder, and from the roof of his house there is a
good view over the village and the tank.
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Roadway from the gate in the former village fortification to the
home of our host; view from his roof towards the tank; dry tank bed and
setting sun
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Spillway and bund of the tank; dry tank bed looking towards the village; view of irrigated fields below the bund
There were two weddings in the village while we were there, with music going on all night long.
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One couple of newlyweds came to our hosts house to pay their respect to the village chief
Early one morning we went for a hike up one of the rocky hills that dot
the landscape in this part of India. We did not go all the way up, as a
mother bear and her cubs were sheltering in a cave near the top.
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Rocky hills of granite punctuate the landscape between the fields; sunrise; the hill we were going to climb
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Farms struggle to make a living from the parched earth
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Approaching the hill lined with giant boulders
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As we climbed higher, the view of the surrounding country became more spectacular
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On the way down, we passed a simple farmhouse, and crossed the bund of a small tank at the bottom
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The farmhouse was adjacent to a deep natural pond in the rock
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Irrigated fields provided green patches among the brown; one large boulder was balanced atop another
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The boulder in the foreground in the center picture rolled down from the hill about 20 years ago; a farm and lifestock
View back to the hill we climbed
(see more pictures on the MaDePro page)
One evening two village drummers came to perform
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The contrast between unirrigated and irrigated fields is striking
Pavagada is the main town in the region, with stores and government services
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A village street; haystacks; dry fields waiting for the rains
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There are often cows and sheep along the road; a small hindu shrine
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The streets in Pavagada are lined by many small shops
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Beyond Pavagada there was quite an extensive wind farm, but no wind, which only really blows 4 months of the year
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Another town on the road back to Bangalore
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One outcrop was surrounded by former fortifications
PLANET UNDER PRESSURE 2012 - LONDON
The last week of March 2012 I was in London for the Planet Under Pressure 2012 - New Knowledge Towards Solutions
international science conference. The conference aimed to provide
scientific leadership towards the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable
Development - Rio+20. With nearly 3,000 participants, many significant
plenary speakers, over 120 parallel sessions for paper presentations,
113 poster sessions, and many other events, the four days were rich in
scientific exchanges, sharing of new knowledge and perspectives, and
cross-disciplinary dialogues around the state of the planet and the
role of science in moving towards sustainability. I had one talk and
three poster presentations in different sessions (see report and texts
on IEF web site at http://iefworld.org/node/562.
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The Excell International Conference Centre on the Thames; two of
my poster presentations; me with scientists from USA, Cameroon and
Mexico
One of the sessions in the main auditorium was on values, co-organized
by IEF board member Sylvia Karlsson-Vinhuyzen, and with a keynote talk
by Gemma Burford of University of Brighton (both Baha'is) and two other
papers (including mine) on the values-based indicators project.
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The values session in the main auditorium; a small part of the
audience; right, from left Gemma Burford, Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen
and other speakers