I spent a week in Kerala last month, looking out for beautiful places to photograph and to plan photography tours for Darter and for a few private groups. We had a great week of travelling as we visited cultural hubs of Kerala, saw and photographed some rare endemic birds, woke up to some amazing landscapes that became a theater to play of light and clouds, and floated over the beautiful backwaters of Alleppey. ‘Cloud Farm’ in Munnar was one such place we visited during the trip. We reached there in near darkness on a damp evening when unseasonal showers seemed to play spoilsport to our visit. We suffered a few leech bites along the way, but escaped from nine out of ten leeches that caught us, thanks to leech-socks provided by our guide.
The next morning, weather had cleared up around the campsite and we woke up to see a layer of clouds separating the mountains from the valley below. The colours of early morning sun penetrated as a strip of gentle red somewhere near the horizon. As the day progressed and the clouds cleared up, the greenery around the campsite became a hub of activity as birds started moving up and down in their lookout for breakfast. Nilgiri flycatchers, Kerala Laughingthrushes, pacific swallows and a variety of birds flew and perched next to plants and bushes very close to the campsite. Later, we made a short hike to the highest point in the region that offered a 360-degree view of the hills and plains around us.
In the view faraway were the plains of Tamil Nadu, the world’s highest tea garden at Kolukkumalai hills and the undulating landscapes of Top Slip. We stood on a small wind-swept, grassy plateau and watched the world around us until the sun gained strength and reminded us of the day ahead.
Here are some images from the visit to ‘Cloud Farm’
Hills and clouds and the hour of sunrise
A Kerala Laughingthrush
Houses on the slopes
Our guide Sibi showing the way
A Nilgiri Flycatcher
View of Kolukkumalai Tea Estate in the opposing hills, claimed to be the world’s highest organic tea garden.
Rhododendrons that bloom in high altitudes
Clouds moving up the hills
The morning spectacle
‘Cloud Farm’ is a camp site with great views, located on the Munnar-Vattavada road, nearly an hour’s drive from the town and further an hour’s walk. The camp site is managed by Nature Unseen, who organize visits and night’s stay at location. Sibi, our guide and the person who runs nature unseen, is well informed on Munnar’s history, flora and fauna. He had lots to tell us when we were spending the night at the camp.
Our stay at Munnar Town was a courtesy of Green Spaces, a small guesthouse about 10km from the town. The guesthouse has spacious and comfortable rooms and most importantly, in a place that is faraway from the town in a quiet location. See more about Green Spaces on their website.
As I write this, I am trying to think how Gangtok is different from any other hill stations. Like its other counterparts, Gangtok too has its share of some great views, a large number of hotels and a dedicated shopping area. The local travel agents have perfected the process of herding the tourists with three-point, seven-point and nine-point tours. I am unable to find anything to set Gangtok apart, except that it is yet to become a big fat dot in the tourist map. The number of people arriving here is probably much less than what you see in Shimla, Manali or Ooty and the number of hotels here are also not as many. But Gangtok is catching up, and catching up fast. The Government of Sikkim is doing everything possible to increase inflow of tourists year after year.
Yet, there is a feel good about Gangtok that you don’t necessarily see in other hill stations. You are less likely to see touts rushing after you the moment you arrive, trying to squeeze every bit of your money. You don’t see any kind of solicitors troubling you as you walk on the roads. People here are still nice and friendly. The hills around the town are still green and are not littered with hotels and resorts. Even the shopping street is so well managed that I don’t feel the claustrophobia that I tend to feel in other such places. Gangtok is still beautiful.
And the most beautiful part of the town is perhaps the zoo spread over a large area. When we started planning our first day in the town, I suggested that we go to Gangtok Zoo first.
‘Would you really like to see the zoo?’ some one responded immediately.
In return, two of us who had been here earlier said quickly in unison – ‘it is a beautiful place.’ It is an open-air zoo spread across a large area on a hill with plenty of space for each of its inhabitants. A zoo is indeed a confined space, but the sloth bears, snow leopards, pandas, civets and wolves living here still have plenty of space to walk around in their large enclosures. Sometimes these enclosures are so large that you won’t be able to see them without waiting for them to emerge from the woods. A family of pandas, a family of bears and a bunch of civets living here seemed happy, considering that they live in confined spaces, but a leopard and a Tibetan wolf looked lonely and brooding.
The paths that connect these enclosures go through thick woods and bamboo groves running for several kilometers. The cool weather of Gangtok has allowed a large number of flowers to bloom along these paths, forming bright yellow and purple dots in the woods.
Lingdum Monastery is located in a quite place in the middle of woods – the kind of place perfectly suited for spiritual pursuits. The facade of the monastery is a long two-story structure with large windows. A long wall of prayer wheels stands on the open area in front of the monastery. The monastery looked large, but I wasn’t prepared for what is inside.
As I walked through the front door, I was taken away by what I saw. Standing in the center of the monastery, surrounded by thick woods on all sides was a superb seven-story building adorned with Buddhist symbols all along its walls. In front of it was a wide open space where several young monks were on a learning session. The maroon-robed kids were dancing gently to the sound of drums in small groups, swaying their hands and occasionally jumping back and forth. Behind them, the tall tower rose high, superbly decorated with vibrant colours and beautiful paintings. In the next minute or two I took a few pictures of the monastery, but soon realized that in the short evening I was to spend here, I would rather sit quiet and take in the peace of the atmosphere than go on a clicking frenzy. I put away my camera and walked alone quietly along the monastery, feeling a sense of peace growing within me. As I write this, I realized that the experience of being in the monastery was beyond words and stopped making further attempts to describe the inner joy of being in the place and experiencing a feeling of nothingness, a feeling that nothing else but being there really mattered.
A video of monks practicing their steps by Sankara.
As the sun made his way beyond the ridges and the last rays of light kissed tower of the monastery, we retreated to our resort walking away unwillingly from the monastery. As we drove into Gangtok town and walked amidst revelling tourists at the shopping center, I wondered if these monastic retreats played a significant role in keeping the people of Sikkim friendly and in keeping Gangtok a hill station that is a lot more charming than its counterparts.
As monsoon clouds move into the western ghats in the early days of June, the hills of Chikmagalur see a remarkable transformation. The vistas of grassy slopes and the dense forests of Bhadra Wilderness disapper under a blanket of thick fog. The fog never recedes for the next three months and it looks as if the skies have disappeared, never to come back again. But come September, it goes away as magically as it had arrived to reveal the beautiful blue skies and to welcome the warmth of the sun.
Chandradrona Parvata, commonly known as the hills of Bababudangiri Hills, host the highest peaks in Karnataka and is home to some of the densest rainforests in the region. I made a dashing visit to the hills this monsoon season and made an attempt to capture the foggy hillscapes. Here is a collection of images of Chandradrona’s Fog.
Coffee estates dominate the slopes of Bababudangiri. The district of Chikmagalur, along with neighbouring Coorg, grows bulk of the coffee produced in India. The need for a balance of sun and shade in coffee estates allows coffee growers to retain some of the trees that naturally grow in the region, but they constantly chop the branches and leaves to allow some sunshine to seep in. This creates a weird landscapes full of tall trees standing bare, often with only tender leaves sprouting from their hacked branches. Add a foggy monsoons that hides the details in the landscape and you get an eerie atmosphere in the hills.
Many roads in the hills are without tarmac and sometimes you can barely call them roads. Many roads are also privately owned by the coffee estates that are spread over thousands of acres. We drove through one such road on an ancient Mahindra that lacked the luxuries of shock absorption. Sometimes we treaded over rocks when the road disappeared in stretches, each time double checking to ensure that our backs have stayed unbroken. The road lead to the roaring Hebbe Falls that was falling with full force in the peak monsoon season. I stood in the narrow valley of the stream and felt the wrath of the waterfall whose sprinkles made me completely wet in a matter of seconds. I went there determined to take a picture and decided not to step back despite being faced by a jet of droplets hurled away from the waterfall into me. Keeping the camera covered most of the time, I set it up on a tripod, composed blindly and hurriedly took a picture, exposing the camera in the open just for a few seconds. The lens surface became completely wet in those few seconds and you can see the droplets in the picture. I knew this was a task meant to fail, but I had no heart to come back without trying.
Monsoon is the season of fertility in the highlands of Chandradrona. Every exposed surface remains wet all through the three months of rain. Life in different shape, form and size grows effortlessly at the slightest opportunity; even tree trunks are never spared.
Innumerable streams crisscross the forests in these mountain, sometimes rushing down the hills in a great hurry and sometimes meandering gently through the forests. They come together in River Bhadra and feed the plains of the Indian peninsula. These streams come alive during the monsoons, charged by the continuous rains that keeps pouring throughout these three months.
