Ranchi
— a high plateau where the rivers fall away in steps.
Not only on a wall.
“Capital of Jharkhand, set on the Chota Nagpur plateau at around six hundred and fifty metres. The rivers around the city drop in falls; Hundru steps down nearly a hundred metres into a basalt gorge, and the air stays cooler than the Gangetic plain below. Once a summer retreat for the British administration of Bihar, it became its own state capital in 2000.
Ranchi, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Ranchi sits on the Chota Nagpur plateau in eastern India, at an elevation of around six hundred and fifty metres. It became the capital of Jharkhand when the state was carved out of southern Bihar in November 2000. The city lies in the Subarnarekha river basin, surrounded by sal forest, ironstone hills, and the indigenous homelands of the Munda, Oraon, and Ho communities. Its higher elevation kept summer temperatures lower than the Gangetic plain, which is why the British made it the hot-weather seat of the Bihar government from 1912 onward.
Three waterfalls within an hour's drive define the local landscape. Hundru, on the Subarnarekha about forty-five kilometres east of the city, drops about ninety-eight metres in a single sheet over basalt, among the tallest falls in eastern India. Dassam, on the Kanchi river, falls in a broad curtain about forty-four metres high. Jonha, where the Gunga meets the Raru, is a hanging-valley fall reached by stone steps. All three run heaviest just after the monsoon, from September through November.
The plateau air is what set Ranchi apart from the plains. At around six hundred and fifty metres, summer maxima rarely climb past the high thirties Celsius while Patna and Kolkata sit several degrees hotter. Winter nights drop into the single digits. The cool dry months from November through February are the steadiest; the southwest monsoon arrives in mid-June and delivers most of the year's roughly eleven hundred millimetres of rain to the surrounding sal forest.