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Abby ShalekBriski

@abbybiedenbach

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how I know Southside Baptist Church was premature in their declaration

i have been to a dr five times in the interim for tick/bug bites

happy fall yall. no more of this no pants nonsense. more denim. more wool. MORE MORE MORE. by @abbybiedenbach

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4 days ago

living in the times of
no going under it
no going over it
guess i’m going straight thru it 🫡 by @abbybiedenbach

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13 days ago

four years with the loml. the only codependent relationship i tolerate. love ya RW. by @abbybiedenbach

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a month ago

unsatisfied w this outfit drop. but living in a day where life as i know it is about to shift. felt necessary to document the in between szn. some small things i love

-not being a neutral nails human
-my “i don’t like the government” hat
-poppy shirt
-jelly flats
-silver jewelry
-anything but water by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

one last very small dispatch from india. on day 6/7, we made it to bengaluru. i had been sick for several days at this point and spent a good deal of time here in bed eating plain rice.

do not feel sorry for me. i was really stupid and ordered a salad?? anyways, i was able to rally for a wonderful party hosted by Hiya, Nihal and all their friends. Five stars. Experience complete with Budweiser. i felt very at home.

the highlight of bengaluru was getting to see a tabla concert. the tabla is like two drums. i am about to botch the explanation but it goes something like this. tabla performances are kind of a structured improv. so the performer is making it up (???) BUT in accordance with very specific rules about the composition. for example, the rhythmic framework is called the tala. kind of like a time signature. a common tala would be a sixteen-beat cycle divided into four. what was so surprising to me was how attentive the audience is. essentially, when the performer does this improv and ends it on beat one of the cycle, the audience has been paying attention and notes it with applause. so everyone in the crowd is counting!!! (please google this. i am so shoddy at explaining music.)

all in all. a successful expedition. a huge thanks to @_hiyajain, her family and friends. i could have never navigated this trip without them. excited to visit again sometime!! by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

day five of india was spent in Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad was first settled in the early 1400s. it's also the home of Hiya Jain.

photo 1: the old city of ahmedabad was walled. local lore is that there are 12 of these gates. (historians have different ways to count this.) regardless, GORG.

photo 2: the streets of the old city are very narrow. india has a lot of full sized cars. you would be insane to drive one in the old city. so we zoomed around in autos (little three-wheeled thing shown in this photo). fun. chaotic.

photo 3-6: random scenes from around the old city. it's a UNESCO world heritage site. so there's everything from immaculately restored homes to beautifully decaying places waiting for their facelift. it's a beautiful mash-up of 600+ years of hindu jain islam mughal british architecture. as you wander around, you might notices the pols. pols refer to kind of a micro-neighborhood. basically a cluster of houses. they share an entrance (kind of like an american cul-de-sac. except there might be dozens/hundreds of homes in the cul-de-sac). traditionally, these pols would house a caste, religion, etc.

photo 7: we had an opportunity to visit an Amul milk processing plant. Amul is the world's largest dairy co-op. they originally started their business by milking buffalo. today, they've expanded to also milk from cattle. their sales of fluid milk are heavily dependent on the high demand. most fluid milk is sold in plastic pouches and only has a ~2 day shelf life. it's pasteurized (but doesn't undergo the ultra-pasteurized process that leads to the long shelf life that we have in the states).

photo 8: milk tankers bringing milk to the plant.

photo 9: one of the many, many Amul products. i love the flavored milk products. five stars.

video 10: we ended our night getting our eyebrows threaded. not that there's much to thread on my blonde scraggly little brows. meanwhile hiya and melanie got the "pain is beauty" treatment. but not that i cared as it cost us a little over 50 cents apiece.

overall, i love Ahmedabad and i will be looking for any excuse to go back and visit. by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

day 4 in india: farm visit!
we were so lucky to be hosted by an organic farming co-operative outside of Nashik. Nashik is considered a tier 2 city. this essentially means they aren't one of the metro areas, more like a regional city. however, Nashik is thought to have been continuously settled for about 2,000 years.

photo 1: thank you so much to the ladies of the household for hosting us. chai, snacks, hospitality- worldwide farm wives are saving the day. i never take for granted the "invisible" work of women in ag and ag adjacent households.

photo 2: i was not expecting the crowd that we drew. we had a roomful of farmers, representatives from the local government and ag companies. and a time was had. shout out to Hiya for being the translator. i had to laugh. about three-quarters of the way through the conversation, they inquired if i could find a way for them to import grapes into the U.S. i had to inform them that was above my paygrade.

photo 3: this is the biologics resource station. farmers in the area can come here to purchase approved biofertilizers, biopesticides, etc. i was taken aback by how small the blue jugs are. but then i remembered: small fields.

photo 4: nursery. local farmers can come here to buy started veggies.

photo 5: family dairy cows. skinny but happy cows. (cows here are very used to people. peep those halters.) if you look closely you can see the chopped corn stalks in the bunk.

photo 6: an acre greenhouse! the members of this co-op grew soy, but also a lot of veggies & grapes. this greenhouse currently has a cover crop grown on it that will be tilled under so veggies can be planted.

photo 7: a tiny tractor. the average tractor hp in india ~45. basically the size of our riding lawnmowers.

photo 8: soybeans at the co-op waiting to be sacked (sacks on right). this broke my brain a bit. i've only every seen soybeans handled in bulk.

photo 9: pickling of mangos. there were hundreds of these barrels.

photo 10: the co-op just got cold storage! meaning less veggie spoilage.

i could talk your ear off about this. so many thoughts, only 2,200 insta characters. again, incredibly grateful that this could happen. by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

day 3 took us to Ellora caves. the caves are a UNESCO world heritage site. excavation for the first cave began somewhere around 600 CE. 34 main caves are open to the public, but over 100 exist in the surrounding area. this site is special as buddhist, hindu, and jain caves exist here. instead of destroying other religions caves and temples, they were allowed to coexist. the photos (some stolen from Melanie. thank u queen for being the trip photog) don't begin to do the place justice. if ur drinking coffee and bored, highly recommend doing some light reading on the caves.

photo 1: this is allegedly a lion. Hiya pointed out it actually more closely resembles Neill the Seal. iykyk.

photo 2: this is on one of the walls at Cave 16. think of this of a comic strip. it's basically a picture version of the Ramayana. the Ramayana tells the story of prince Rama who gets exiled, goes on an epic journey to save his wife, saves the day, etc. isn't it insane that this is all carved out of a basalt stone?!

photos 3-5: still looking at cave 16 (photo 2). this is the Kailasa Temple (Hindu. Hindu = Shiva). it's really the gem of the entire cave system. they carved all of this out of one piece of basalt. let that sink in. they didn't bring stone to the place or retrofit. they carved all of it, top down. MIND BOGGLING.

photo 6: everything you just saw, also used to be painted. inside, protected from weather, there's still traces of paintings. again, think of the sheer volume of artistry and how many people must have worked on this!!!

photo 7: i think this is cave 29 (??) again. this is another hindu temple. the previous photos show excavation top down, meanwhile, this cave is much more cave-like as it is carved horizontally into the hillside. but look at those columns!! wow.

photo 8: cave 10 (carpenter's cave) is a Buddhist cave. my favorite detail in the ceiling. the ribbed beams copy earlier wood temple ceilings.

photo 9: this is Ambika (a Jain goddess) in cave 32. notice the mango tree above her.

video 10: coming during monsoon season might be wet, but we got to see the waterfalls!

that's it for today. see u tomorrow, folks!! by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

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2 months ago

day one in india kicked off after two hours of sleep with an early morning excursion through mumbai. a small synopsis below:
photo 1/2: approximately ~38% of the country still reads a daily newspaper. india has 22 major languages (& 100+ more recorded). every morning papers still go out on paper routes in dozens of languages.
photos 3/4: fresh flower market. if you seen photos of temples in india adorned with flowers, that's exactly where all of these types of flowers end up. an abundance of carnations.
photos 5/6: we walked along the fresh veggie market. this will be a reoccuring theme for this trip. my mind was blown by the amount of vegetables being grown everywhere. this is maybe bc irl i am a sort of veggie hater (like most people with gi problems) and i've lived in places where we mostly do commodity crops + cows. was really fun.
photo 7: this is the dhobi ghat. the dhobi ghat is open air laundry. it is still operational and does huge quantities of washing, drying, and ironing clothes and linens. while the rise of washing machine has seen the dhobi ghat shrink, ~5,000 people still live and work here.
photo 8: the chhatrapati shivarji maharaj terminus (victoria terminus). huge train terminal that is a smixture of victorian italian gothic revival and indian architecture. v. beautiful. also looks like it would be right at home in a harry potter movie.
photo 9: fish market! since it's monsoon season, it isn't really peak fish market time. but that's ok. i could not tell you what any of the fish i saw were. but prawns. i can definitely tell you i saw a bunch of prawns.

not pictured is a ton of shopping for textiles and jewelry (which i am sure you will see my new mumus and silver stack on soon. fully endorse going shopping in mumbai).

photo 10: finished the night with dinner at a gastro pub thing and ice cream on the beach with friends.

an abbreviated but great day in mumbai!!! see u again tomorrow for my day 2. by @abbybiedenbach

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2 months ago

one weekend in the swamp looking for gators, one weekend playing in mountain streams. NC can be alright. by @abbybiedenbach

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3 months ago

rode bikes in colorado with our friends. i love them dearly but in all of these photos i am fake smiling. i get real sick. Esp around 12,000 feet

thank god something like climbing Mt. Everest has never been of interest

until next time Colorado 🫡 by @abbybiedenbach

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3 months ago