BAILEYS BLINDS

picture was shot by my dear friend Baqar Nassar ..

I got a message on my Facebook wall from another dear friend Dr Robi Ludwig, she loves turquoise,,as much as I do or more...she wants one for Valentines Day..

Much of the turquoise I have is from Nishapur Iran.
The two big ones on my hand have a strange story, I got one of them the one on the left hand from a Indo-Iranian jewellery fair that was held at Bandra Reclamation..by Nassar of Lucky Hotel ..the guy who sold it to me was called Fairuz Iranian name turquoise ..my name is derived from the Iranian root Firoze.

We became good friends and because of my attire people thronged to his stall, he made a killing and gave me the turquoise stone at a very special price, he also gave me a ruby ring..I too bought a lot of amber from him, Kerba..

The ring on my right hand I found at a stall at Bhendi Bazar its an identical twin, just two shades lighter , normally I would dip my rings in badam oil, to get the depth of color ..and it gives a luster too.

I have a humongous collection of rings, many I have given away to some of my Gurus..
but my favorite are the claws and my set of black Sulaimani Akeek or agate.

I also have a huge rocky turquoise pendant from Tibet.. and two bead turquoise necklaces from Ladakh..

About Turquoise

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8·4H2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue. In recent times turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market, some difficult to detect even by experts.

The substance has been known by many names, but the word turquoise was derived around 16th century from the French language either from the word for Turkish (Turquois) or dark-blue stone (pierre turquin).[4] This may have arisen from a misconception: turquoise does not occur in Turkey but was traded at Turkish bazaars to Venetian merchants who brought it to Europe.[4] The colour, however, has been employed extensively in the decorative tiles adorning Turkish places of worship and homes for hundreds of years, beginning with the Seljuks, or was derived from the colour of the Mediterranean Sea on the southern Turkish coast and the association quite possibly has caused the name to take root.

Even the finest of turquoise is fracturable, reaching a maximum hardness of just under 6, or slightly more than window glass.[2] Characteristically a cryptocrystalline mineral, turquoise almost never forms single crystals and all of its properties are highly variable. Its crystal system is proven to be triclinic via X-ray diffraction testing. With lower hardness comes lower specific gravity (high 2.90, low 2.60) and greater porosity: These properties are dependent on grain size. The lustre of turquoise is typically waxy to subvitreous, and transparency is usually opaque, but may be semitranslucent in thin sections. Colour is as variable as the mineral's other properties, ranging from white to a powder blue to a sky blue, and from a blue-green to a yellowish green. The blue is attributed to idiochromatic copper while the green may be the result of either iron impurities (replacing aluminium) or dehydration.

The refractive index (as measured by sodium light, 589.3 nm) of turquoise is approximately 1.61 or 1.62; this is a mean value seen as a single reading on a gemmological refractometer, owing to the almost invariably polycrystalline nature of turquoise. A reading of 1.61–1.65 (birefringence 0.040, biaxial positive) has been taken from rare single crystals. An absorption spectrum may also be obtained with a hand-held spectroscope, revealing a line at 432 nanometres and a weak band at 460 nanometres (this is best seen with strong reflected light). Under longwave ultraviolet light, turquoise may occasionally fluoresce green, yellow or bright blue; it is inert under shortwave ultraviolet and X-rays.

Turquoise is insoluble in all but heated hydrochloric acid. Its streak is a pale bluish white and its fracture is conchoidal, leaving a waxy lustre. Despite its low hardness relative to other gems, turquoise takes a good polish. Turquoise may also be peppered with flecks of pyrite or interspersed with dark, spidery limonite veining.

[edit] Formation

As a secondary mineral, turquoise apparently forms by the action of percolating acidic aqueous solutions during the weathering and oxidation of pre-existing minerals. For example, the copper may come from primary copper sulfides such as chalcopyrite or from the secondary carbonates malachite or azurite; the aluminium may derive from feldspar; and the phosphorus from apatite. Climate factors appear to play an important role as turquoise is typically found in arid regions, filling or encrusting cavities and fractures in typically high

For 4,000 years, ever since a pharaoh first raised a sail, or his slaves an oar, Nile cruises have plied between Luxor and Aswan. The modern voyage typically takes three days and at times can be almost hectic.

There is a schedule to keep and the river gets crowded. In high season, with everyone wanting to do their sightseeing at the coolest times of day, you can be piled into sites already heaving with visitors from other boats. In some places the cruise ships berth 10 abreast, so passengers on the last vessel to arrive have to traipse across nine other ships to reach the shore. Nevertheless, a Nile cruise remains one of the classic journeys that everyone should make at least once.

There are ways to calm the pace. You can choose a longer, more relaxed itinerary or travel on one of the smaller and slower sailing cruisers called dahabeeyahs. In whatever style you do it, your trip will almost certainly include a day trip by air from Aswan to Abu Simbel. However, there is a real alternative. Go to Abu Simbel by all means: it's one of the fabled spectacles of the planet. But do it the way the ancients did. Go by boat.

Cruise ships can't pass the dams at Aswan so you have to change vessels before spending another three days' cruising south on the waters of Lake Nasser. It could hardly be more different. If you want a measure of just how different, consider this: on the Luxor-Aswan section of the river there are some 400 cruise ships, though they seldom all operate at the same time. On Lake Nasser, there are six.

Lake Nasser was created by the Aswan High Dam, which was completed in 1970. Named after Egypt's second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, it's one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Nearly a third of its 340-mile length is in Sudan.

Related Articles

Cruising with the Romans in North Africa 17 Mar 2009
Antarctic cruise: Extremes at the ends of the earth 18 Mar 2009
Voyage through the Commonwealth 06 Mar 2009
Whatever its economic benefits – electricity, increased agricultural land – it also brought devastation to the riverside in what was the old kingdom of Nubia. More than 50,000 people, whose homes were to be inundated, had to be resettled. With surprising vehemence one of my guides in Cairo declared, "What Nasser did to the Nubians was a crime."

Not just people were moved. Some of the oldest monuments of human civilisation were uprooted, dismantled and reconstructed above the lake. The temples of Abu Simbel are the most famous but there were more than 20 others. Garnered from the river banks by international teams of engineers and archaeologists, they were taken to safety in an extraordinary rescue operation instigated by Unesco. One temple, Amada, was put on rails and dragged uphill, intact, for more than a mile, 900 tons of it. All nine sites visited on this cruise would be under water had they not been transplanted, by anything up to 35 miles. Now they have been grouped along the lake shore in three small clusters, making them easier to see and manage.

With the exception of Abu Simbel, the temples are small, but their chamber walls are adorned with some of the most graphic tableaux in Egypt, vibrantly coloured paintings and reliefs. Together they make a High Definition documentary of dynasties already ancient to the ancient Greeks. We had our own guides and we had the temples to ourselves, landing at each by launch, and escorted by two white-uniformed policemen toting automatic rifles. A gesture, one suspects, if not a job, for the boys.

Our ship was the Kasr Ibrim. Built in 1997 in the style of a Twenties steamship, expressly to work on Lake Nasser, it was not dissimilar to the old Post Boat that plied between Aswan and Wadi Halfa, in the Sudan, at the turn of the last century. Its picture is in the Nubian Museum at Aswan, which was donated 11 years ago by the Egyptian government as atonement for the indignities done to the Nubian people and the near eradication of their culture.

The Post Boat was little more than a steel hull with a large, colonial-style pavilion on top. Kasr Ibrim is like that, but its pavilion has four storeys. The interior, efficiently air-conditioned, is art deco in style. The lounge would pass for a set in an episode of Poirot. Besides the parquet floor, timber panelling and hefty, period armchairs, the room is planted with wood-clad columns. Their capitals are like stylised lotus flowers, the "blooms" illuminated behind alabaster lights. The decor is a front – the ship has more modern facilities than the retro style would suggest. All but seven of the 65 cabins have balconies; ten of them are suites. There's a sauna and Turkish bath on the bottom deck and a pool and Jacuzzi on top. Every cabin has a fridge and a bath, whirlpool baths in the suites. I would reduce Kasr Ibrim's official five stars to four, if only because every meal but one was a buffet. As for the food, travellers of the early 20th century would be familiar with t