Musings of a Wandering Mind

Some updates..

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 ‘The Open Show Bangalore‘ on ‘Chadar Expedition – Walking on the Sheet of Ice’ to a small gathering of photography enthusiasts. It was interesting hearing various views (‘why aren’t you presenting them in B&W?’) and answering questions (‘how did the camera cope with extreme temperatures?’) from the gathered photographers. You will see more about Chadar on this blog in the coming days.

I will be embarking on more journeys soon, starting with a photography tour to Badami, followed by another one to the incredible landscapes of Lahaul and Spiti. Do join me on either of these tours.

Six Years of India Travel Blog

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.

It has been a beautiful journey of travelling here with thousands of travellers. Some narcissistic statistics 🙂

• More than 900 posts with a couple of thousand photographs.
• About 1.5 million visitors with about 3 million page loads since inception.

The ultimate aim of India Travel Blog remains what I wrote here a year ago: “to consistently produce good quality photographs and travel writing that informs and entertains the readers.”

Once again, thanks for coming here year after year to see photographs and read travel stories. 🙂