Cityscapes

Some random shots of Delhi. Perks of keeping the camera handy while going around town on odd jobs.

At close quarters

Of late I've not been true to the blog title. There's been hardly any roaming, but quite some shutter work. But the catch within a hundred yards from home has been pretty interesting. Apart from the usual tailorbird, purple sunbird and bee eater, I have chanced upon an Indian Pitta and also a Pharaoh's Chicken in flight (chased by a Kite).

Ashy Prinia

Neighbourhood

Yearning for natural beauty, some wild life, and enjoying nature, we plan a long trip with its inevitable planning, bookings, transport, companions and so on. And then there are times when, unable to travel due to exigencies of life, we open our mind and senses to our immediate surrounding to find it all right there, around our homes. I've often used this free and readily available option to capture a few precious moments and take my mind off all worldly stress. This thread is for posting a few such moments that saw flowers, birds, and nature in general.

Vishakhapatnam: A beauty by the sea

Been a long time since my last post, largely due to lack of any new photos and trips. Then came a chance to visit Vishakhapatnam in circumstances that won't ordinarily be conducive to any leisure photography, but true to character I carried my camera; just in case! And I was rewarded by some fabulous views from air as well as on ground.

En route, the Hyderabad airport was a beautiful sight as well as great place to while away a few hours waiting for the connecting flight. God bless the much delayed but finally achieved modernisation of a few of our airports.
Vishakhapatnam, on the eastern coast of India, is a city nestled between rolling hills and the Bay of Bengal. It's a huge natural port, one of the busiest in India, has a steel plant, naval dockyard, naval base and to my astonishment, a series of good quality hospitals activley engaged in domestic medical tourism with patients coming from a radius of nearly five hundred kilometres from different states. There is a long marine drive where locals throng in large numbers in the evening, a beautiful hill top park and a host of sights to see within an hour's drive.

Hope to visit it again, at leisure, in cooler months.

Hills and Gods

In our mythologies, the way to heaven is often through the high Himalayas. A single trip makes it clear why. The sages on their trips for meditation would have seen signs of heaven. The heights, greenery, gurgling streams and raging rivers, clear blue sky and the occasional cloud playing hide and seek with the light never fail to impart that impression. Man does try its best to destroy that serenity by never ending construction, noisy smoke spewing vehicles, and all sorts of chaos that man is uniquely capable of.

Even then, that heavenly feeling still persists. I can vouch for that from several trips to HP, Uttaranchal, and of late, to Sikkim. There was one such moment on a rainy day in the balcony of our resort a little away from Gangtok. The rain stopped for a while and there was a fine specimen of one of the most divine sights, a rainbow.

Flying to Gangtok has its perks. One gets glimpse of Mt. Everest and Mt. Kangchendzonga. Thank God we can now take pictures from the aircraft; and with a bit of cropping, get a close look at the mightiest peaks in the world. Since the road to Nathu La was closed, eventually that was the closest I could get to Kangchendzonga.

Record the passion

Going to places and capturing a moment in the camera are two things that excite me. That moment caught in a frame may have a scenery or an animal or a bird or (very occasionally) people. Each moment is unique, and capable of evoking a unique memory or thought. Each place, similarly, has its own story that neds to be told. I hope this blog will evolve the way the world did, chaos giving rise to some system.

I've added here the picture of a grey heron in flight at Kabini, Karnataka.