India To Africa and Mt. Kilimanjaro Flyover

Here is a quick last look at Jaipur India and some images of our approach to the continent of Africa

A snake charmer on the streets of Jaipur. The venom has been removed and I watched the man try to rouse the snakes when they wouldn't perform as desired.

Jaipur has an unbelievable astronomical observatory that was constructed between the years 1727 and 1734. Please take the time to read how incredibly accurate the measurements are that can be made here. This is a device similar to a planetarium but is built downward. The spaces are for working alongside the sky map, which is carved on the white slabs. A similar device is seen in the upper left and has the part of the sky that is missing in the spaces on this one.

This giant sundial is accurate to within one or two minutes. The ramp points straight to the North Star.

A painted doorway in Jaipur

All of the buildings in central Jaipur are colored pink - thus it is India's Pink City. Weddings are big draw to this city.

India never ceases to amaze me with its color and textures of life. Not everyone on our trip "gets it". India can be difficult for some. But I love it.

We finally began  to see Africa after flying for about 5 hours over the Arabian Sea. Here is the coast of Somalia just north of the capital at Mogadishu.

It was virtually uninhabited along this desert coast and the water was quite clear. The vegetation increased as we went south.

Here are two estuary systems just north of Mombasa, Kenya. Note how the climate is much different here near the equator from the previous shots.

You guessed it - our Captain would not be satisfied with a simple landing at Mt. Kilimanjaro International Airport - he wanted to give us a scenic ride around Africa's second highest mountain. The massif was clouded in on the south side so we flew on the north side to get some views.

The main part of the mountain is below the clouds and a separate cone has grown on top of this to make it the wondrous summit that it is

A good view of the glacier on top of the mountain. The ice scarps seen in the central part of the photo are about 40 feet tall. There are some good links here in this New York Times article from 2009.

Check out these craters within craters on top of a crater near the summit

What a treat this was to fly around twice and see this mountain. My next postings will be of incredible wildlife seen in Serengeti National Park and then the temples of Luxor Egypt.

Moderate-Size Earth Slump Closes Highway 89 in Northern Arizona - A Blog Report From Luxor, Egypt

I am taking time out from my "Around the World" trip and writing from Luxor, Egypt where I visited King Tut's tomb today. Many friends, colleagues and one very special wife have written to me to share news of a giant slump that has closed State Highway 89 between Flagstaff and Page, Arizona. The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is calling this a  "geologic event", one that occurred on the morning of February 20 (local Arizona time). ADOT has already produced an informative and image-rich video describing in engineering terms what happened to the road and what it might take to fix it (thanks to John P. for providing this link to me).

I can give an informal geological assessment of the rock failure as I travel that road often and am familiar with the geologic setting of that portion of the highway. It is one of the most scenic roads in all the state of Arizona.

View from Highway 89 looking west toward the upper part of the Grand Canyon, known as Marble Canyon. The slump area is located just left of this shot and earlier slump deposits are visible in the foreground. The large boulders are collapsed fragments of Navajo Sandstone that fell from the Echo Cliffs (behind the photographer) from the previous slumping events. Photo taken in November, 2007

View to the south of the Echo Cliffs (photo taken in winter, 2010). The older slump is also visible in the foreground and is a part of the recent slump area.

Great view of slump material which is common on this slope. The slump was caused by cohesion failure in the Triassic Chinle Formation. Anyone who travels Highway 89 north of Cameron will know the havoc that this shale and mudstone lithology creates in the bed of that highway. Motorists often "enjoy" a free massage since the clays and shales swell when wet, then contract as they dry.

The Chinle Formation exposed north of Cameron Arizona, displaying the soft nature of the shale, claystone and mudstone bedding. Photo taken on October 17, 2009.

Chuck LaRue of Flagstaff sent me this Google image of Highway 89 and the ancient slump is quite obvious from this vantage. Note how the white colored Navajo Sandstone clearly has slumped downslope just above the highway in this view. Note that road construction in the late 1950's curved around the westward protrusion of the slump material.

Same image with lines highlighting the prehistoric slump area. The solid red line shows where the rocks broke away from, the dashed yellow line is the top of the slump block. This mass of rock slid downslope about 250 to 300 feet. The age of slumping is unknown to me.

A 'Halfway Around The World' Assessment - As I can believe, ADOT geo-engineers are on site evaluating options. Some rumors suggest that the highway may closed up to one year. The bed failure of the highway necessitates a tedious detour around the slump to State Highway 98, making a trip from Flagstaff to Page some 50 miles farther. Some brave travelers may try the unpaved Coppermine Road but likely just once if they do (the road is quite bumpy). I am sure that one viable option is to quickly pave the Coppermine Road. Some have also said that maybe the "slump route" may be abandoned. Not likely.The road is too scenic and too direct for that and engineers rarely say, "We give up" these days. Look for a massive stabilization project on this slope, very similar to that undertaken on the Mesa Verde approach road in southwestern Colorado. (There huge portions of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have often slipped, yet the National Park Service has completed very expensive and a well-engineered solution there. ADOT will do the same here, hopefully that will be landscape interpretive friendly, and we will be able to one day travel this great road again. However, this slope will also one day again slide downhill as it has for at least the last several hundred thousand years.

We Interrupt This Blog To Say, We Are In Egypt Now

And "camped" along the banks of the Nile River. All is well here and visiting the Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Karnak today. I will continue with the narrative later today but wanted to let you know that Egypt is fine right now.

My Fourth Lecture: How Asia Became A Supercontinent

On this trip I am giving five lectures and all but one are given while flying in the jet. My one ground lecture was given while at the Rambaugh Place Hotel in Jaipur, India. This hotel is part of the Taj Group of Hotels and they are known for their incredible properties. Here is a quick look.

One of the many courtyards located betwen the various rooms

A quiet place for breakfast

Marble floored hallway

The front entrance replete with welcoming peacocks. I would later be fully aware of some of the habits of these birds.

Lunch was a buffet enjoyed on the lawn. Dinner that night was on a separate lawn nearby.

Lunch venue

This was my lectern and screen for the evening talk. It was given outdoors on the property. Note that there is a train car near by....

Yep - the owner of the chain collects antique cars and trains and puts them liberally across his properties

This is a 1915 coal fired engine from England. Folks in the back of the "classroom" would be seated here.

At every event that we attended while staying here, the hotel staff would outline the way to the venue with zillions of colorful flower petals

The talk was scheduled for just at sunset and here you see our guests arriving

I just love giving geology talks when beer is served. It allows those might not be comfortable going to "class" to feel more at home. I do not partake until after the talk.

Now, about those peacocks. It seems that peacocks like to crow loudly as the sun goes down. So during my talk I was serenaded (that might not be the right word) by a tremendous cacophony of loud, raucous noise coming from them. It was very loud. One was in a tree to my left, the other in a tree to my right. I could only make light of it, what else could I do? So, I joked that each time they made a noise it did not mean that I was telling a lie about drifting continents. And I told the group after about ten minutes of it that if the peacocks came down on stage to mate, that I would stop talking. They eventually did quit and the lecture went off well.

Here is our expedition leader Micheline Place with a few concluding remarks about the lecture. You can see one of Ron Blakey's paleogeographic maps on the screen behind her.

Then it was off to dinner with the palace lit up at night

Fireworks especially for our group.....

Turbans for all the men, scarves for the women....

More drinks.....

And how about a little game of elephant polo before dinner! There were four matches with six players each.

What a festive evening!

A Day Trip to the Taj Mahal

Today's journey involved leaving Cambodia, flying over Thailand and Burma, crossing the Bay of Bengal, then touching down in Agra, India for a day trip to the Taj Mahal. The weather proved interesting!

 Getting ready to leave Siem Reap Cambodia

 There's Captain Peter Whittick just having fun and welcoming us back to our private jet

 The big news is: Rain across much of the Indian subcontinent and especially at the Taj Mahal. Drenching rain too.

It is the approach to the Taj that is most impressive. The grounds are huge and well kept, giving an impression of grandeur and elegance.

Constructed of beautiful white marble, the Taj began to be constructed in 1632. A brief history of the building is here. 

Its all about the approach. The rain had stopped for a few minutes so that I could pull out  my camera.

Everything is symmetrical about the building such that any half of it is a mirror image of the other

The entrance vaulted ceiling

 Adjacent buildings are made of red sandstone, quarried in the nearby sate of Rajasthan

 When entering the tomb, you can see how detaled the marble was cut

And there are incredible inlaid patterns made with semi=precious gems. The green is a type of chert, the red is jasper. A story about the stones of the Taj is here.

No photo's are allowed inside the tomb and it is too dark anyway to see much anyway. But after we exited from inside the Taj Mahal we found that the skies had opened up over Agra.In fact, this was a weather front that proved to be big news across India. This is the dry season and rain such as this was unusual. Temperatures plummeted to 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees F) setting records for this date in some locations. Two people were struck by lightning in Agra. And hail fell in many parts of neighboring states, damaging crops significantly. Everyone mentioned how strange it was and chalked it up to other weather phenomena that seem to be unusual lately.

The rain poured off of the roof of the Taj much like it does in Marble Canyon back home after a deluge

The marble was quite slick while wet. Although the weather was not perfect, we enjoyed this 4-hour stop to see a wonder that was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.