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The history that is not consigned to the past

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There are historic sites that, time has ensured, are no more than ruins – for example, the Roman forum, Machu Picchu, and Acropolis. Then, there are historic sites that are still physically intact eliciting grandeur – the pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, the many castles of Europe – but have lost their vitality and their intended purpose. Finally, in my mind, there is the third kind – heritage sites that still live today and retain their authenticity; the historic sites that take you back hundreds of years but refuse to consign themselves to history. Ait Benhaddou is one such place. Our road trip started in Casablanca. We were on our way to Merzouga to celebrate the New Year in the middle of the Sahara desert. We spent two days in the beautiful Marrakesh and the night before at Ouarzazate. The next morning instead of driving east our friend, Hakim, took the road back to Marrakech. After driving for about 15 mins, he took the detour north. The air got thinner as we got higher. He said he...
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To the beginning of photography in Texas

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The world is awash with photographs. Anyone with a camera in hand is a photographer. Billions of photos are taken every day worldwide and a vast majority of them never even get a second look, let alone take a physical form, lost in the vast emptiness of the digital cloud. However, things were different back in the day. In the early 19th century, pioneers of photography were busy developing new techniques and demonstrating their results to the public, starting a revolution that would go on to transform the world. Practical photography was generally accepted to be born in 1839, the year Louis Daguerre commercially introduced the photographic process that he developed, which came to be known as the daguerreotype process . The photograph that was developed using this process was itself called a Daguerreotype . Parisian Louis Daguerre had been working on this process since the mid 1820s. The process was faster and demonstrated commercial viability making it the first successful photographic...
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Galapagos Islands: How I met the animals

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Galapagos Islands is one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet. It's a melting pot of diverse fauna and home to more than 2000 species found nowhere else in Earth. Since the islands were first discovered in 1535, anthropogenic (man-made) changes are the biggest environmental threat affecting the species on the islands. Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1835 and his research here inspired him to produce his seminal work on evolutionary biology, “On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection”. This brought increased attention to the islands. Conservation efforts increased in recent years but the ecosystem degradation continues unabated, driven by a myriad of factors including climate change, deforestation, overfishing, pollution and introduction of invasive species. Today, around 30,000 people live in the Galapagos and another 200,000 visit the islands each year putting enormous strain on the delicate ecosystem. I visited the islands to see the animals I had researched about...
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