Happy New Year 2011!!!!

As the new year blossoms, may the journey of your life be fragrant with new opportunities, your days be bright with new hopes and your heart be happy with love! Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year 2011 : )

Mud Tiles

I was amazed to see these tiles made of mud were arranged to form this beautiful painting like structure, which was hanging on the reception wall of a hotel in Kerala. Didn't wait much to capture it in my Camera with the due permission from the hotel folks!

Happy Holidays...!!!!

        Wish you a safe and fun filled holiday season!!!


- This pic taken in Coorg, on the way to golden temple!

Random Clicks...

Sunset at Mangalore Beach

Sunrise at Marina, Chennai.

Lord Shiva at KempFort, Bangalore

Driving through Nagarhole National Park

While coming back from Coorg, we planned to drive through this beautiful and must see forest and national park adjoining the other national parks, Bandipur and Mudumalai, as my friends and colleagues insisted to visit this and indeed its a lovely experience watching the wildlife and nature beauty so closely and colourful. 

We have started our journey from Srimangala in the morning and dedicated the half day for these ~45 kms drive in the national park on the way back to Bangalore via Mysore, lush green paddy fields sorrounded by coconut and Areca palm trees with clear sky welcomed us in the morning and all along the way.Though the road was little bumpy in some stretches, it didn't deteriorate our mood and excitement  Enormous information about this place and wildlife at Wiki

This 45 kms drive consists of beautiful narrow road with lot of curves and hollows surrounded by all sorts of trees colourful grass, surprise appearance of some beautiful birds adding to the excitement. Rain god has also boosted us with some sudden showers which turned the forest even more beautiful. Since its a wildlife sanctuary, tourists are encouraged to maintain low speeds and no honking.

This forest is in rich with different wild animals, tigers, different types of deer, leopards, wild dogs and different species of birds, but all we could see was lot of peacocks, herds of deer, grazing, crossing the roads and few wild dogs. If you have the correct equipment, you could get some beautiful shots for your life.There's a safari which starts from 3pm  in the afternoon.

We took almost 4 hours to cover this stretch with lot of breaks enjoying the nature,wild life and of course for photography with different poses and angles :)

Previous posts from the Coorg Trip:

• Flowers from Coorg
• Coorg for a trip

Flowers from Coorg

As i mentioned in my previous post on coorg, i have taken some good number of pics of these different flowers on the way to coorg.

Rose

Pulse Polio - Poster

As part of the Rangoli competition for one of the celebrations in my office today, i came across this entirely different "rangoli" describing the importance of the Pulse Polio program.

And the caption for this rangoli goes like this "Just Two drops, make Life Happier",though it was written in Kannada, but i tried to get it translated as much as i could :)

Standing Alone....

Spotted this beautilful house standing alone in the well known backwaters of Alleppey-Kumarakom,Kerala.

Butterflies....

I had to chase these guys for a considerable time in the scorching sun for these shots, recently in my village during Diwali.

Happy Diwali !!!

                                          Happy Diwali

Ramappa Temple

Ramappa Temple which is located in Palampeta village, Mulugu taluq of Warangal district, which is around 70 kms away from Warangal town, was built in 1213 A.D  by Racherla Rudra a general of Kakatiya Ganapati Deva, as per the available records.This temple has a uniqueness that it has been built with the floating bricks by the sculptor Ramappa.

As per Archaeological Survey of India...

one of the sculptures inside the temple, on a pillar.

The most famous Nagini scultpure

Lord Ganesha and Nandi at the temple premises

you can find more info about how to reach this place and historical facts about this temple in Wiki and Internet.

Shivana Samudra Falls

As part of our Mysore trip for a long weekend, we have covered some beautiful places including Shivanasamudra falls, since this is around 70 kms from Mysore and around 120 kms from Bangalore, definitely a good getaway spot for the weekend. Here, the river Kaveri drops off from a height of 90 metres and width of around 800+ meters to form these 2 major segmented falls.

 Here are few of my clicks of these falls:

One segment of the falls

Another segment of the falls

Complete view of the falls

Have also covered other places like Somnathpur, Ranganathittu bird sanctuary, Kaveri Sangama and Srirangapatna including Mysore in this trip, will write about them in a different dedicated posts..stay tuned!

From My Backyard...

Custard Apple and Guava from my backyard..

droplets....

Heart Shaped Pond at Chembra Peak!

There's a Heart shaped pond on the way to the Chembra Peak trek at Wayanad, you'd be here at this place after about 2-3 hours of strenuous trek. This is the best view of the pond i could get, as we couldn't complete the trek, since we started the trek very late around 1pm :( and we had to report back before 4pm, coz the general day trek slot is around 8am to 4pm.

You'll get the perfect view of the heart shape after around 30 more mins of trek!

We spotted this another dried up pond forming the similar shape.

Final destination is around 1 hour away, from this heart shaped pond's place.

You can also go for a 2 day trek, where you can spend that night at the peak in the trek tents that you carry with you and the security/police will guard you during the night time.

Salem City View!!

I shot these pics when we went to Yercaud for a trip. Bright Salem City view from Yercaud's Peak point on a cloudy day.

another view

Balance in Life!

I had shot this video some time back at my sister's place and thinking of sharing it here, but somehow i didn't do that. Finally it is here, which depicts the perfect balance required to complete this job. Of course, there are so many occupations/jobs involving so much of risk in life, but for them its a bread and butter for livelihood and a daily routine, nothing new. One such job is Extracting the Palm Juice.

Rain through My Window

Its been raining heavily in bangalore for the past 2 days, which brought back the cool, chilling bangalore own climate and joy in the lives of the people, otherwise it was damn hot for few days before this. I tried to capture that beautiful sound and night view of the rain through my window jus now and here's it for you.

Coorg for a Trip!

During the recent long weekend, we made a trip to Coorg, The Scotland of India for 3 days. Here are the pics along with brief information of the places we have covered these 3 days.

On Day1:

We set out of Mysore for Coorg, on the way, we had a decent breakfast at Cafe Coorg and hit the place called Bylakuppe, just few kilometres before Kushalnagar, where these Buddhist Monasteries are located. More info at Wiki

Bylakuppe Golden Temple:

Entrance to The Golden Temple

Golden Temple

Lord Buddha along with Guru Padma Sambhava and Budha Amitayus

Signage describing the idols.

This temple has a very big and wide hall filled with silence and the walls are decorated with beautiful paintings of 25 disciples of Buddha who attained high realizations through the practice of the Dzogchen Teachings, along with the paintings depicting the life story of Lord Buddha and 12 teachers of Dzogchen. We spent considerable time in the premises and inside the temple.Since this is very well known, it'll be crowded generally, but there's one more temple just few kilometres away from this temple, nobody was there, may be due to heavy Honey Bee Hives in the premises. But it was worth visiting this temple amidst the honey bees flying around.

Then we hit the Harangi Reservoir which is roughly 9kms away from Kushalnagar. Though  the police didn't allow us to the top of the reservoir due to some riots related to Kaveri water issues, it was scenic as the water is flowing from the gates as the waves hit them.

Forgot to mention, on the way to this dam, i have a spotted a  beautiful flower garden just infront of a small house with tiny Ganesha idol in the middle of it. They have as many as 30+ different variety of flowers. Have taken some of my best flower shots there. Thanks to the lil kid and his family for helping me with my shoot :)

Then we broke for lunch as we enter madikeri at Orange Lagoon, food was okay but the ambience is good in the middle of garden and a stream near by.  After the moderate lunch we went to Nisargadhama, which is around 2 kms from this hotel. 

We spent about an hour in exploring this beautiful island formed by river Kevri. This has elephant ride and deer park in it. More info at Wiki.After this we directly went to Dubare Elephant camp, where the elephants were trained for Mysore Dassera festival and more Info There's a white water rafting which covers about 7kms in Kaveri waters for about 90 minutes.

I think i should break here and will come back with a diff post covering day2 and day3 places! Stay tuned....