Situated within the old city of Jaipur near the City Palace and Hawa Mahal is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Jantar Mantar. Named after the words "yantra", which in Sanskrit means "instrument", and "mantrana" meaning "to calculate", the Jantar Mantar is an equinoctial sundial that measures the time of the day and the declination of the sun and the rest of the celestial sphere.
Despite living in an archipelago boasting some of the finest beaches and islands in the world, I still find myself dropping my jaw at a sight of a marvelous island setting. Such is the effect Calayan Island had on me the moment I first laid eyes on it. As the only municipality among the group of Islands of Babuyan—a cluster of pristine isles situated several miles off the northern tip of Luzon, Calayan appears so remote and full of raw beauty.
It isn’t a question of “Why?” anymore. Rather, “How?” as in how we can help our farmers more? should be the fitting query. Fortunately, a long overdue response to the plight of our farmers is now taking shape. Thanks to small entrepreneurs like the Local Goodness PH, local produce from far communities are finding its way straight to the doorsteps and into the table of new consumers. Suddenly, the concept of farm-to-table is slowly becoming a reality.
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| Farmers in a vegetable farm in Mountain Province gathers their day's fresh produce |
Marky Ramone Go is a travel-junkie, writer and photographer based in the Philippines. Aside from contributing articles to various publications and websites, he narrates his experiences wandering the tropical paradise of the Philippines, the culturally rich regions of South East Asia, Sri Lanka and India on this travel blog. After Asia, he is keen on exploring South America and eventually tracing Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" trail in the United States to Mexico.
