Project Bly Brings World Street Market Culture To You

If you are the kind of traveler who lives for digging through flea markets and wandering through souks, you might want to travel over to ProjectBly.com, a new lifestyle website featuring a rotation of world street market collections. In addition to shopping for carefully curated home goods and textiles, you can also check out street photography, food, fashion and members’ profiles.

Bly highlights a new city and one-of-a-kind market goods every two months, working with local photojournalists to capture the style and spirit of each place. The website works with local vendors and artisans directly to get a fair price on goods, and gives 5 percent of proceeds to local charities. The first featured city is Mumbai, India, with La Paz, Bolivia, debuting in early June. Other cities planned for the first year include Kumasi, Ghana; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Malacca, Malaysia; and Berlin, Germany.

Bly is named after Nellie Bly, a pioneering female journalist who traveled around the world in 72 days in 1889 with just two day’s notice and one small bag (check out a nifty drawing of Nellie Bly’s packing list, which included a flask and a jar of cold cream). The founder of Bly, Rena Thiagarajan, was born in the former Indian city of Madras (now Chennai) and now lives in San Francisco, and has traveled the world in search of unique design finds and street culture.

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Get hunting at ProjectBly.com and check out the slideshow of street photography featured on the site.

Photo Of The Day: Chennai, India

Dried ginger, like other dried goods, requires careful preparation. The ginger root must be washed, peeled, sliced and left out in the sun to dry over time. This photo by photographer Keith Pennington captures three Indian women taking on the task of drying ginger in Chennai, India. I love this shot not only for its candid nature, but also because it somehow depicts the heat of the sun and the meditation behind the practice. If you have a photo you’d like to submit for Photo Of The Day, just upload it to the Gadling Flickr Pool.

Photo of the day: Marina Beach, Chennai, India

This shot of Marina Beach in Chennai in India evokes numerous desires within me–ones that can be easily reduced to a checklist:

1. Visit India.
2. Visit Marina Beach in Chennai.
3. Fly kites more often.
4. Go to beaches at night more often.
5. Take photos more often.

Funny how much want a simple photo can initiate…

Be that wanting as it may, I really love this photo. Taken by Keith Pennington, the photo offers up a nice representation of how popular Marina Beach is in Chennai.

Have you been to Marina Beach or any other beaches in India? Tell us where you went and why it was good or bad in the comments. And, as always, if you’d like to submit a photo for Photo of The Day, just upload it to the Gadling Flickr Pool.

Photo of the day: firecracker in Chennai, India


A friend of mine, Vishaka, was born and raised in in Chennai, India. She has now married another friend of mine, Keith, an American, and they live full-time in Indiana. But every so often, once or twice a year it seems, they make the trip back to Chennai to spend time with family and to keep their ties to Chennai’s culture tight.

This shot captures Vishaka setting off her first firecracker outside of her parents’ house in Chennai. The vibrant light is what I like most about this photo–especially with summer now in full-swing.

Have your own firecracker or summer shots to submit for Photo of the day? Upload them to the Gadling Flickr Pool so we can take a look.

Photo by: Keith Pennington

One Wall Street Journal reporter’s rickshaw ride through India

If you’re looking for a fresh take on the Grand-Tour-Through-India travelogue, one with a heavy dose of culture (and even danger!), check out Niraj Sheth’s blog on his roadtrip by rickshaw through southern India.

What makes this blog–running until the end of this week–stand out is Niraj’s unique perspective as a Wall Street Journal reporter and in his own words, as a ABCD: “American-born, confused desis [slang for Indian].”

His commentary about how the local Indians view him is especially sharp, and humorous in parts. For instance, one mechanic, and he seems to need many, jabbers to a friend in front of Niraj, who has spoken Hindi throughout his life, “It’s amazing he speaks Hindi so well.”

The multimedia here is also better than most–make sure not to miss the photo slide-show and intro video below.