Mussoorie - II

Some of the birds spotted @ Mussoorie that were first timers for me...

This is the Green-Backed Tit. Almost like the common Sparrow but has this beautiful yellowish-greenish colour.
Title "The alarm clock outside my window" ;)

This is the Streaked Laughingthrush. Plenty of these around and you can spot them throughout the day...

Title "Too much rouge???"

This dude was hanging upside down and still pecking away effortlessly. It was a full 2 minutes where it just went about its business without any care and then finally flew away. Can't title this one...

Grey-Hooded Warbler, very beautiful bird, did not get any good shots...





Russet Sparrow, the back of this bird was a brilliant chestnut colour that was really bright in direct sun light. The bright colour, you can see only a little bit of it in the picture, was a first for me...

Mussoorie - I

Posting some interesting pictures from the recent Mussoorie trip...

I was quite surprised when this picture came out. Had a very small object to focus on and was expecting it to be out of focus but as it turns out the chimes were in focus and the background blurred...




As someone pointed out, couple of flaws in this picture, top of the head is cut and her eyes are closed. But I was quite happy with this, the conditions were tough, it was in low light and she was stirring her wok and was continuously moving...




My favorite, it has a dog and a mountain :) Bright sunlight and a very relaxed dog made taking this shot fairly easy.



You really can't capture, in a photograph, the beauty of hundreds of these flags with Buddhist inscriptions fluttering in the wind on top of a mountain. Plus being at the foothills of the Himalayas made this hill-top even more special. I can never forget the sight and the sound of these flags...

London buildings...

London, in terms of buildings, definitely has a really good balance between the old and the new. At many places I saw the two worlds clashing, wierd looking modern buildings of glass and steel standing next to old, elegant, brick and stone buildings, maintaining a pleasing contrast. Here are some examples:

This was visible from the Westminster bridge...


Don't remember where I took this but found the two buildings next to each other very striking...


The next two are while walking from the London bridge to the Tower Bridge on the southern side of the Thames river. The walk from between these two bridges is something I would recommend to everyone. There are a million things to notice there...

Portland Aerial Tram

The aerial tram is a 3 minute ride to the top of a hill to the Oregon Health and Science University and definitely a must see for people visiting Portland. Here are the mountains that were visible...

Mt Hood


Mt St Helens belowing volcanic smoke...

Places...

Trillium lake...Trillium was the name of the first company that I worked for after graduation...

Madras!!! Well, I didn't take the 26 East to check if they too have their version of the 'Sarvana Bhavan' ;-)

beaches and waterfalls...

...of Oregon

Oregon...pristine

After covering nearly 600 miles of 'Oregon Scenic Byways' over the weekend, pristine is the word that comes to mind. Pristine in the sense of beauty and serene but also untouched and uncorrupted. How do they manage to keep such vast expanses of natural beauty in so much 'order'?!? Even in the remotest of the places it looks as if someone has just mowed the grass and pruned the trees...

But, no doubt, the place is amazing. The weather was not the best but the drive was totally worth it. I covered the Oregon coast from Newport to Astoria on one day and the Mt Hood scenic loop the other...

On the costal drive the highlight was the Yaquina Head Lighthouse built in 1873. The winds were howling and the view form the lighthouse was nothing because of the heavy fog rolling in but whatever was visible and the lighthouse itself were quite nice...

SF run...

The Twin Peaks in San Francisco were the target of my run in SF. I started running from the Mission street in the general direction of the hills. It wasn't a good idea to run uphill after a week's layoff from running but it was a nice sunny day and very ideal for running. Obviously I got lost but finally did manage to make it all the way up to the hill right besides the Twin Peaks called the Sutro hill which I now found out is about 50 feet taller than the Twin Peaks anyway ;-). The Sutro hill has a huge and very peculiar tower called the Sutro tower on top of it. I had my camera with me in a pouch that fitted very nicely in my hand and took some pictures on the way up and made mental notes of the rest that I wanted take pictures of on the way down, here they are...

This was another one of those steep streets that I ran up. Well I ran up this one but there were several on which it was just not possible to either run up or down. Check out that striking dark red, maroon tree...

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Finally I spotted the Sutro tower right in front of me and I took this without stopping on the way up the final uphill street...

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Below is the 'Transamerica Pyramid' building (taken with 12x digital zoom), a fairly prominent part of the SF skyline...

And lastly the Golden Gate bridge was visible from the top. The bridge is now 70 years old...

Building mural...

This was the mural on the side of a building in SF city. It is one of the best murals I have seen. I don't think the panoramic picture above captures the painting too well. Maybe the close-ups below capture the uniqueness of the painting...

More SF...

Another house from SF with really nice flowers growing up front. Unfortunately the camera shook a little and the picture didn't come out too clear...

San Francisco

The sun was out today and the walk through SF was spectacular. You can see it for yourself below...

Here is a panoramic view of the city...


Here are two differently coloured but typical SF houses standing next to each other...

Blue Mountains...

Visited the Nilgiri mountain ranges a couple of weeks back, this area is really ‘wild’ with the Mudumalai and Bandipur national forests at the base of these mountains. But in terms of wildlife the trip was fairly disappointing because the national forests were closed due to the danger of forest fires.

It was really dry all around. Check out how parched everything was…


Also in terms of trekking/hiking it was disappointing because we could do neither. But among the good things on this trip, one good thing was the weather on the mountains. Once you made your way up the mountains crisp cool breeze, clear skies and fresh air greeted you.
Oh by the way the drive up the mountains was extremely picturesque and challenging. The Zen performed beautifully, compared to some of the other bigger cars that kept getting into trouble on the steep climbs. The car was in first or second gear almost throughout, same thing coming down. The beauty around made it tough for me to keep my eyes on those 30 odd hair pin bends. My rubbernecking (rubberneck: To look about or survey with unsophisticated wonderment or curiosity) definitely gave some heartburn to the co-passengers, whose brunt I soon faced ;-)
Anyway once on top, taking all that fresh air in at the higher altitudes, you felt really rejuvenated. At night you could see about a gazillion stars in the sky. Spectacular show, it was...

Two incidents that happened were, one, seeing two porcupines darting across our jeep headlights in the middle of the night. I thought they were chickens but then I saw the spikes! Beautiful spikes with white streaks! These two porcupines looked as if they had just raided some food store in the middle of the night and were scooting away with the loot atop their heads.
The second incident was going to an animal watering hole in the middle of the night and just waiting...waiting in pitch dark, in silence. I had read somewhere that when one of our senses is deprived then the brain compensates by making the others more sensitive. This was definitely the case as we couldn't see much at all but our hearing was working overtime. There were 3 or 4 owls in the area each hooting away to glory in their own tone and rhythm. And then suddenly there was a small growl followed by a rustle and a soft sound of water trickling. It came from the opposite bank, just once, but we couldn’t spot anything or make anything out…

Here is the panoramic shot of the valley…

Mangalore Coast Trip

(Rough and better late than never)
Days: 3 days, 2 nights
Total distance driven: 1150kms
Places visited: Mangalore, Ullal Beach (base), Suratkal Beach, Udipi, St Mary's Isles, Maravanthe Beach, Shri Mookambika Temple @ Kollur.
Gripe: Weather didn't cooperate.
High points:
- 'Shark Tooth' on the beach under starry skies
- B'fast at a quaint place in Udipi
- Maravanthe
- 30km drive through the mountains to the Mookambika temple


Sunrise behind the lighthouse @ Suratkal beach

Here are some pictures from a recent drive...

Tadiyanmol Trek...
...a picture I took on the trek...


Stimulated by this I did a pencil sketch, while sitting on my desk :)
...a dark scan of that sketch...


...a lighter scan of that sketch...

Reaching out...

This picture from the Dubare trip is what everyone is ending up liking.
Let me know what you would caption it as...

That was a good trip...

11 of us went to Dubare in Coorg about 2 weeks back. I won't write in a lot of detail because it’s been about two weeks and I am probably too lazy right now, but here are some of the memories...

- The rough night time journey in the back of the 12 seater bus to Dubare. In the last seat, A and me couldn't sleep a wink.
- The miniscule size of the upma serving for b'fast and S's reaction to it: "Has he given me this for some quality testing or what?"
- The charming bungalow...sigh!
- The trek through all the greenery...(double) sigh!
- The boat we used to cross the river. When I say boat I mean 10 odd 15 feet long bamboo sticks tied together in a bunch (not laid out flat as in a raft) :)
- The numerous shallow river crossings done on foot on the return trip of the trek and the awesome teamwork :). P's ankle getting twisted was slightly scary.
- The picture I took of K and P ;)
- The campfire and "office" conversation with S and N.
- The post dinner late night carrom games and how we, the weaker team, frustrated the "pro" team 3 times in a row by taking the queen each time.
- The sunrise on the bank of the backwater lake. Getting a view of Kumara Parvath from the bank and showing off saying that I have climbed that mountain. :D
- Cricket in the driveway and making rules on the fly a la "Calvinball".
- Rafting and then the subsequent jumps off the raft. Teaching the first timers to float over from their backs to their stomachs. Single handedly "plucking" 3 people out of the water on to the raft :)
- The numerous jokes and imitations done by S in the bus...the bus. They were really fun because all of us had experienced those things at some time or the other...the other...and we were all able to relate…to relate. :)

There are so many more small memories; A trying to command a stray dog; K saying that the dog will eat bananas and R running to establish the proof; the dhinchak dvd player; kajara re; people learning to stay afloat and their individual reactions :D; the coracle ride; the food provided by the hosts (including kiwi fruit); Parushrama and Prashant; etc etc...(triple, quadruple, penta, hexa...) sigh!