F.R.I. on Fri

I went to my first museum in India today: the F.R.I. on Fri(day). I like it.

The F.R.I. has some beautiful natural sculptural works (that you aren't supposed to take pictures of) that they label as diseases with latin names - trees, fungi, bugs... but it does make sense since the Forestry Research Institute is just covering their mandate.

Natural Sculpture on display

 The shapes and textures and colours... were amazing!

This beautiful area and stupendous building (not only a museum but a large campus with a few different schools and a University that has M.Sc and Ph.D. programs in forestry and environmental sciences) were a great early afternoon adventure!

F.R.I. building (one of three wings)

Fuls (Hindi for flower) in the garden posing for a picture

Fools (English for those who wear goggles*) posing for a picture
(*note: googles are the Hin-glish name for Sunglasses)

 It was already well over 23C degrees at 10:30am when we started our adventure to the F.R.I. but that didn't stop me! Oh no! I was definitely going to see the uhh... at that time I did not actually know what the place was called... uh... the... um... National Forestry... something... say "Department" was the only way I could help poor Banita as she asked for directions. But in our defense it seemed that two of the five guys who could indicate our course of travel thought it was called the F.I.R. and one of them had no clue what we were talking about (and we were less than 1 km away from the place).


NWFP = Non-wood forestry Products

What did I learn today? Well... there is a lot of great information, beautiful design and important history associated with the forests in India and, by default all over the world. As one sign I saw yesterday said "a Tree is an International Smile." Awww. But really, after seeing the "Social Forestry Museum" and the vast array of non-wood products I hadn't even considered when I thought of forests... I was amazed!

I think this poster says it best...



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