This photographer is Agron Dragaj. A Kosovar born professional photographer who currently lives in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. He did humanitarian aid work in Sri Lanka during the Tsunami and constantly publishes his works in magazines like Daily News Sri Lanka, UNHCR publications and many more. He is also the founder of the photography agency The wideangle.
A 500km round trip from the Southern Serengeti to the northern edge of the Masai Mara National Reserve, the Great Migration is probably Africa's greatest wildlife spectacle and one of the World's most exceptional natural phenomena.
The vertiginous immensity of the event is overwhelming, numbers so large that they are hard to visualize. Migrants include 1,300,000 Wildebeest, 360,000 Thomson's Gazelle, 191,000 Zebra, and 12,000 Eland.
They join the anyway-large resident populations of herbivores, that feature 95,000 Topi, 76,000 Impala, 46,000 African Buffalo, 26,000 Grant's Gazelle, 14,000 Kongoni, 9,000 Giraffe, 6,000 Warthog, 2,000 Waterbuck, and 2,000 Elephant.
And then, adding pathos and drama to the already extraordinary spectacle, a hungry constellation of predators -most notably lions and hyenas- follow the herbivores all along their clockwise migratory route.
Lions and hyenas are not the only meat-eaters, though, as cheetahs, leopards, wild dogs, and jackals, as well as every scavenger of the area, wait impatiently for their share of the banquet.
The Masai Mara (also spelled Maasai Mara) is a large park reserve in south-western Kenya, which is effectively the northern continuation of the SerengetiNational Park game reserve in Tanzania. Named for the Maasai people (the traditional inhabitants of the area) and the Mara River, which divides it, it is famous for its exceptional population of game and the annual migration of zebra and the wildebeest from the Serengeti every year from July to October, a migration so immense it is called the Great Migration. Its twenty or more lion prides are an attraction.
With an area of 1510 km² the Masai Mara is not the largest game park in Kenya, but it is probably the most famous. The entire area of the park is nestled within the enormous Great Rift Valley that extends from the Mediterranean Sea to South Africa. It is at the bottom of the Siria Escarpment. The terrain of the reserve is primarily open grassland, with seasonal riverlets. In the south-east region are clups of the distinctive acacia tree. The western border is the Esoit Oloololo Escarpment of the Rift Valley, and wildlife tends to be most concentrated here, as the swampy ground means that access to water is always good and tourist disruption is minimal. The easternmost border is 224 km from Nairobi, and hence it is the eastern regions which are most visited by tourists.
Conflict diamonds, also known as blood diamonds, are diamonds that are used by rebel groups to fuel conflict and civil wars. They have funded brutal conflicts in Africa that have resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people. Diamonds have also been used by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to finance their activities and for money-laundering purposes.
Only a few African economies have actually benefited from diamonds, while Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Liberia and Sierra Leone are still recovering from widespread devastation resulting from wars fuelled by diamonds. Diamonds are being smuggled out of the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire and out of eastern DRC, and continue to be used for money laundering, tax evasion and organized crime.
The Mayan Calendar comes to a screeching halt in the year 2012. Or does it? Many archaeologists, scientists and philosophers have been studying the Mayan Calendar over the last several years, driven in part by the supposed apocalyptic ending of the calendar, and the fears that it may signal the end of humanity.
The Mayan Calendar is a calendar of creation. There is no doubt that the Mayan Calendar comes to an end in the very near future. However, the end of the calendar is October 28, 2011. How do we know this? Archaeologists discovered a stone at the ancient site of Coba in the Yucatan. When they raised the stone, they discovered that carvings on the stone showed the creation date of the Mayan Calendar. When the carvings were translated they found the start date of the most recent period and could then extrapolate the ending date more accurately.
Even though the Mayan Calendar has an ending date, nothing about the Calendar or the Mayan prophecies points to humanity's demise. On the contrary, it may actually point to our return to the recognition of our purpose here on earth and the destiny to which we are evolving. As such then, the Mayan calendar is much more about our evolution than our destruction.
The Mayans actually used many calendars in their daily lives. The most important one they used is called the Tzolkin and is a 260 day calendar. Each day of the Tzolkin is assigned a number 1-13 called an intention and each day has a sun sign of which there are 20. 13 x 20 gives you 260 discrete days. The Mayan's would start their days by acknowledging the creative impulse of the day and would structure their day by that energy. Each person was then infused with the Intention and Creative Impulse of the day in which they were born. The calendar was so important to the Mayan's, that their first name was always the name of the sun sign of their day of birth!
Punniyadi
Thambalagamam
Trincomalee
Trincomalee
Fieldof thirst
Kantale
School Girl- Kinniya
Out of Dark
Muhamalai
Nuwara Eliya
Arugambay
Colombo
Colombo
Habarana
Jaffna
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