—Categories: meta

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.

landscapes of Hampi

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!

—Categories: darter

Random musings – posts on this blog, travel plans, photography tours, etc

travelHere is a general update again, I think after a couple of months. We still have three months for the year to end, but I am already beginning to feel that 2012 is here. It is probably because I have my sights set and calendar blocked as far as February 2012. Nearly every week of mine from late October to third week of Feb 2012 already has some activity planned and some travelling scheduled. It is good to be busy, especially when you are busy having a good time.

You might have noticed that the recent posts here are mostly about our photography tours coming up in future. It is largely because I have been terribly busy designing, planning and putting up tours in the last few weeks and have little time to post anything else. Since winter—the only true travel season in India—is about to begin, we at Darter have been working out a variety of wildlife, culture and nature tours across India. On the calendar are tours to the diverse places in Hampi, Goan wildlife, splendours of Rajasthan, birds and mammals of Kutch, the cultural riches of Varanasi and a lot more. You will be seeing a few more tour updates here, before regular posting of travelogues and images begins in a week or so.

I will be leading some of our photography tours, a few that are already announced and a few more on the drawing board. Below are my destinations for this winter.

  1. Hampi (November – 3 days)
  2. Rajasthan (November end – 10 days)
  3. Varanasi (December end)

There are a few more coming up besides these, which I will be posting as we work on them. Besides the above tours, I am also planning a personal trip to Himachal and am leading a private group of photographers on a long two-week trip to Kerala. These are journeys I am looking forward to.

Here is a full listing of our tours in the winter. Do come and join us on any of these. Our tours are photography-centric, but photographers or otherwise, people who have joined our tours have almost always gone back carrying beautiful images, great memories and having made some good friends. And since we go in small groups of 10-12, we get plenty of time to talk to each other, interact well and spend a lot of time discussing photography with the tour lead. I really look forward to meeting a lot of readers of this blog this winter season in our tours.

Happy Travels!

—Categories: meta

Some updates..

tso moriri lake2011, 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. 🙂

chadar trekOn 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.