Western Ghats
— — the mountains the monsoon turns to cloud.
Not only on a wall.
“A range older than the Himalaya, running down India's western edge from the Tapti River to Kanyakumari. The Western Ghats catch the southwest monsoon off the Arabian Sea and lift it into rain, feeding the Krishna, the Godavari, and the Kaveri. Forests on the seaward slopes hold one of the world's eight biodiversity hotspots. Hill stations sit at the cool altitudes the British found in the late nineteenth century.
Western Ghats, 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.
The Western Ghats run for about 1,600 kilometres along the western edge of the Indian peninsula, crossing Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Geologists place their formation in the breakup of Gondwana, well before the Himalaya rose. The highest peak is Anamudi in Kerala at 2,695 metres. The range was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, recognising thirty-nine component sites that together protect montane forests, grasslands, and the headwaters of the major peninsular rivers.
The Ghats act as the rain barrier of peninsular India. As the southwest monsoon arrives in June, the seaward slopes can take more than 7,000 millimetres of rain in a season, while the leeward Deccan plateau lies in their shadow. The range is the source of the Krishna, the Godavari, and the Kaveri, which together drain most of the peninsula. Waterfalls such as Jog Falls in Karnataka, dropping 253 metres in four leaps, run heaviest in July and August.
Above about 1,500 metres the air cools sharply and the forest changes to shola grassland mixed with stunted evergreen pockets. The British raised hill stations at these altitudes from the 1820s onward, including Ooty, Munnar, and Mahabaleshwar, to escape the heat of the plains. The shola-grassland mosaic is one of the most biodiverse habitats in the range and holds endemic species such as the Nilgiri tahr, the lion-tailed macaque, and the Nilgiri flycatcher, all listed as endangered or vulnerable.