Random Updates – Winter Travels
A busy October is just behind me, now it is time to look forward to a winter full of exciting journeys. November is a month for me to attach wheels to my shoes and keep going from place to place. After a week of lazy holiday in Manali in October and exploring the beautiful mountainsides around the town, it is time for me to head to my annual pilgrimages to Hampi. Hampi is nothing short of a pilgrimage for me, as it is one of those places where I keep finding new opportunities for photography, new sites to see within the places I keep wandering and a new beauty in the river and its landscapes. It is going to be a short three-day visit, but I can’t complain as no amount of time is enough for this beautiful place.
Soon after coming back from Hampi, it is going to be another short visit to Kerala, where I will be savouring the pleasures of watching Kalari and Kathakali performances, and photograph fishermen and weavers at work. Soon after I come back, there is another trip waiting to the forests of Gir National Park and then a long tour in Rajasthan. There is plenty of work for my camera for next one month!
2011, it appears, is a year of plenty of travel. I just came back from a rather adventurous trip to Ladakh. We had our share of visiting the incredibly beautiful landscapes and endless stretch of the blue lakes, but before that it required spending a night trapped at 12,500 feet near Rohtang Pass. Thanks to the bad weather caused by the first rains of the season. I guess that pretty much ended my generally very good luck with weather in the mountains. My longest wait at Rohtang so far was perhaps fifteen minutes, and our driver who is a regular here put his earlier longest wait at thirty minutes. With near 24 hours of wait, unable to even go back since the road behind us was completely clogged, all of us had perhaps set personal records of longest time in a car. The reward was in taking our time to linger in the beautiful landscapes of Pir Panjal, watching one of the most beautiful sunsets and seeing Himalayan Griffons soar in the skies much above the mountains. The penalty was in the tired bodies and eventually tired minds at the end of the long night spend cramped in the car. In the end, it will be an adventure remembered with tales to tell. 🙂
On other updates, yesterday, I presented a photo-slideshow at ‘
India Travel Blog completes six delightful years today. What started as a means to record my travels has now become much more than that and has perhaps defined much of what I am today. Thank you for your wonderful support all these years, and for having been coming here to read my travel stories and see the images.