Nature calls..

There are some moments in life when you realize that the most simple things in life are the ones that we ignore the most, take them for granted and assume that they are always there..



They also happen to be the finer things in life which we cannot do without - the birds, the bees, the trees, the flowers, the deer, the ants, the spiders,the grass, the thicket and before I say like Keats "and the fruit tree wild..", let me tell you that my vain attempt at poetic prose is inspired by the 3 days spent in a Naturalist Training Programme organised by Jungle Lodges.



I went bird watching for the first time and it was amazing to wake up to an orchestra every morning. We spotted close to 20 species and some of them stay quite fresh in my mind. The special moments were the sighting of the Tickell's Blue flycatcher and the paradise fly catcher, the purple sunbird,the small minivet,the golden oriole,the Eurasian eagle owl, the red wattled lapwing and the blue bearded bee eater. However, it wasnt just them.


It was about realizing that all nests may not belong to birds, but could be that of a social spider .It was also about looking at the differences between the red vented bulbul and the red whiskered bulbul,the magpie robin and the Indian robin,the spotted dove and the laughing dove, listening to the call of the puff throated babbler, the sighting of the coppersmith , the sillhouttes of the wing patterns of the swift and the swallow in flight,the eye of the oriental white eye,the brown cap of the pygmy woodpecker and the white browed fantail. The colours are still so vivid in my mind and I realized that just watching these birds and their behaviour can be so addictive . I wondered what really took me so long to get to the world of birds.


But its not just the thrill of seeing and discovering birds..its also about discovering the world around you that makes you alive and gives you an identity.Its also about telling you that there could be a world soon when all these will slowly die or disappear as their habitat gets taken over by man.Its also about discovering that for every species of plant lost, we lose 30 species of organisms. There is drama,tension, mystery, colour and wonder in this world which we often miss. Unfortunately there is also death and decay here which we are indifferent to.

On a different note. Some quick updates here...
This blog has been selected as the featured blog in Best Indian Blogs and Im quite kicked about this..Thanks guys for reading my blog and making this happen. Im off to a new destination day after, a hill station ,a fort and a forest rolled into one..Any guesses ? You can look for answers in Cerebrate . Ive been missing out on all your posts and will catch up when I am back next week.

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Bridges and Rivers

I had not planned to travel in March - in fact I didnt have any destinations or holidays in mind . However, a couple of pilgrimages and family trips took me to into some of India's beautiful places. And I crossed several rivers .They were dry , but the sheer beauty of seeing water in a dry landscape is an amazing experience .

There is the River Tunga in Sringeri in Chikmagalur with such amazing fish which are both protected and revered..




There was the River Bhadra in Chikmagalur near the Kandya temple and at Kudre Habbi with some amazing rock formations caused by the force of the water


The two rivers join to form Tungabhadra. We crossed the river at Mantralaya , but there was hardly any water there.We moved on and the River Krishna stopped us , but we couldnt stop by at the bridge to take a picture. However, we were able to take quite a few of its tributary River Bheema in Yaadgiri.



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Images of India - On a hot summer day

 

Of late Ive been driving into rural India more often than once. Almost every trip has taken me into this rustic world where villages and small towns seem to beckon me. This has probably been so over the last six months and probably barring Chennai and Hyderabad, I havent been to a city . I just returned from a weekend trip only to become a casualty to Bangalore's pollution, heat and dust. Maybe thats why Im advocating a holiday to a pollution free world

In a way, I seem to be more inclined towards villages than small towns. I believe rural tourism has great potential - not just portraying the stereotypes or "real India" as the guide books say, but a connect back to the simpler,more basic way of life . What do you think ?

Images of India - a drying yard in a coffee estate

I was in Malenadu last week, on my way to Sringeri and we transited through the coffee country - Hassan, Belur, Chikmagalur.If you followed my twitter updates, you would have got a feel of the journey.

I was at a couple of coffee estates , which have a colonial feel to them.One of the plantations is up hill in Chikmagalur near Balehanoor and we drove into the drying yard. There was less coffee and more spices, especially green pepper in this drying yard .


Persuaded by Gopal and Deepak I've enrolled for the photoblog contest.Pls vote for me here and dont forget to vote for Deepak and Gopal as well.

Faces of Chennai

images from the photowalk - You meet many faces when you walk down the road and some stay with you..

Chennai-moments and monuments

Our photo-walk continues as we walk past the Churches -Wesley and St Andrew's Kirk.It gets hotter, but we pause by capturing a few moments and monuments on the lens.


Pink seems to be the flavour of the season - the Govt Arts college and the Egmore station .




We continued looking at some old houses, offices ,shops, hotels until my battery ran out..






And something that made us go dead in our tracks !