It has been a terribly busy (the ever-present excuse for not posting much here!) and eventful January for me and the new year has kicked with a good note for me.
Along with professional photographer Shreeram, I have kick-started Darter, a venture on conducting photography tours across the country. We began with a photography tour of Hampi, which ran full and we received tremendous feedback from the participants. We will be stepping up on the gas with more tours and February will begin with a grand tour to photograph the wildlife in Little and Greater Runn of Kutch. Look up more about us on our facebook page and do join us on our photography tours.
In two days, I will be leaving for a 20-day expedition braving the cold of Ladakh which falls below -20C and heading to the heart of the mountains. I hope to push the limits of landscape photography and hopefully come out with eye-catching images of the frozen yet stark Ladakh.
Stay tuned for more updates on the photography tours and images from Ladakh. Thank you.
Let me begin with wishing you Happy Holidays. I hope you are somewhere in some beautiful place or on the way as I am writing this and will get to read this post only after a week.. 🙂
This is the time to look back at the year that is about to go past and then forget it – to look back once to recall all the good things and bad, and allow both of them to get washed away from memory forever and begin afresh without shackles of the past.
I consciously did not travel much in 2010 and instead focussed on streamlining my work in photography and travel. I am seeing some fruits of this effort already and the days ahead look much better. Here is a quick summary of my journeys and images in 2010. I am going nowhere in this year-end travel season, so it is safe to list them now, knowing fully well that there is nothing more to add!
The temple at Devarayanadurga
I have posted 160 stories here on India Travel Blog in 2010, which approximates to a story every other day. A lot of them are images and photo-stories but there are plenty of long travelogues as well. If I remember correctly, the first travel of 2010 was a short drive out of Bangalore to Devarayanadurga and Madhugiri Fort. It was memorable trip of driving out early in the morning in the winter chill and discovering some beautiful wilderness and hills north of Bangalore.
Bhoganandeeshwara Temple
I made a few more journeys in and around Bangalore later in the year, which included a visit to Manchanabele Dam, one to Nandi Hills and Bhoganandeeshwara Temple at the base of the hill and a day-trip to see the Mysore Palace in all its glory during Dasara Celebrations.
I also managed to go to a few beautiful places within Bangalore that I had never visited earlier but always wanted to see, like the Freedom Park and Tipu Sultan’s Palace. Not that you can call it traveling, but the visits were worth mentioning. Over the last few years, I had considerably cut down on short drives from the city and had been travelling to farther places. But there were many day-trips and two to three-day visits out of Bangalore this year.
A foggy Wayanad
Foggy hills of Chikmagalur during the monsoons
One such weekend trip was to Wayanad in March, escaping from the quickly increasing temperatures of Bangalore to cooler climes where it was still foggy and cold. And later in July in the middle of the monsoons, I made another trip to fog-enveloped Chikmagalur where we never saw the sun for three full days.
A sambar deer in Kanha National Park
Slopes of Sikkim
As for longer trips, I spent four days in Kerala visiting Thrissur on the day of Thrissur Pooram and continuing further to Trivandrum. I was in Trivandrum to work on a story and had dreaded the April heat, but thankfully it was raining there and I spent three pleasant days in the city. Later in June, I spent five days in the wilderness of Kanha National Park where I thoroughly enjoyed the company of wildlife. A quick but memorable trip to Sikkim happened in October. Last month, I made another wildlife trip to Bharatpur National Park followed by a visit to Dharamsala – two places I had been wanting to visit for a very long time. That was pretty much my year of travel, besides some journeys made on work and strictly work, which included a short trip to Ooty and Hassan, and a long trip to Mathura.
Buddhist icons at Dharamsala
Once again, happy holidays to you. I hope 2010 was a good year for you and so will the the coming days will be.
Prints of all the images available. Request for prints.
