Despite spending two winters in UK, the snow eluded me. When I landed in UK for the first time, it had cleared out a week before. And the second winter, it started within hours my flight took off from the Heathrow airport. When the time came to land in Aberdeen on the third winter, it was action reply of first visit – no sign of snow again and I had to wait for another winter. With numerous number of warnings/stories about the previous winter which went as low as 16 degrees below zero, I waited eagerly to face the sub zero days and the snow. But alas, snow eluded me again – except for just a day when it snowed in December. We were woken up to a white day, but only to melt off quickly in next two days.

Background image: A white winter morning at Aberdeen as seen from the living room window.

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After two years I visited Loch Ness and Urquhart castle, I was there again. Unlike last time where we drove all the way to the castle, we decided to take the cruise on the dark waters of Loch Ness to reach Urquhart Castle. It was a windy day, but the clear sky and a bit of sunshine made it an enjoyable ride to the castle. Here are few photos taken while searching for the mysterious monster of Loch Ness. :)

Dark blue waters of Loch Ness

Hotel Loch Ness Clansman – starting point of cruise journey

Another view from the cruise

Urquhart Castle, as seen from the boat

Closer look of Urquhart Castle

Kavishaila is a rock monument dedicated to Kuvempu, one of the greatest literary giants of Karnataka. More than a monument, its the place which inspired Kuvempu to give us the wonderful pieces of Kannada literature. It is on a small hillock right next to his childhood home Kuppalli. Kavishaila is also the place where Kuvempu and his son Poornachandra Tejaswi, a famous Kannada writer himself were laid to rest.

And in case if you are plannign a visit to Kuppalli, here are few near by places of interests – Kundadri, Mandagadde bird sanctuary, Agumbe, Sringeri.

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Mid August and five days with us to spare for three of us. After countless number of lengthy discussions on places to visit and itinerary, we were still clueless on where to go. Finally, we decided to reach Goa, spend a day and come back. But with no any fixed plan on route, stop-overs, places to visit en route. That’s when we chanced upon to visit Gudavi, a small less known bird sanctuary in Shivamogga district of Karnataka.

It was almost noon, by the time we reached there. But the overcast sky and drizzles made us feel it was still 8 in the morning. As we entered the sanctuary, we were welcomed by squawking of countless number of birds. The area was completely filled with hundreds of Black headed Ibises and a few Egrets which were complete minority among Ibises. The view from the watchtower was much more beautiful – white dots sprawled all over the green scape. But only sad part was we were not able to spend more time at the place due to intermittent rain and the birds too were not happy because of the weather.

Gudavi is 15 KMs from Soraba taluk of Shivamogga district. There are no facilities to stay at the bird santuary. Nearest places for a decent accomodation are Sagar or Shivamogga. Along with Gudavi, near by places of interests – Keladi, Banavasi, and of course the well known Jog falls.

I tried hard not to write ‘year that was’, but couldn’t contain myself. Hesitation to not write was due to two main reasons – one, travel took a back seat though I flew to a different continent in the beginning of the year and two, writing too took the other remaining back seat.

Long walks on the banks of river Don

First week of the year 2011 saw me packing my bags and travelling to UK, my third visit in as many years – which was exactly on this date. First quarter was dormant one, thanks to winter. I was restrained to four walls except for few long walks along the river Don, which flows right next to the place I was staying.

Balmoral castle, one of the residences of British royal family

Second quarter and first month of third quarter saw me exploring the castles of Scotland, mostly in Aberdeenshire. Castles I visited ranged from completely ruined (Urquhart castle, Dunnotar castle to inhibited by the royal family (Ediniburgh castle, Windsor castle). In between the visits to castles I went on a hike to Bennachie, a mountain west of Aberdeen – a hike after more than two and half years!

St Pauls cathedral, as seen from the far end of the Millenium bridge

Third quarter turned out be a fruitful one in terms of travelling. I was in London for a week – acting as a guide to my mom who was visiting me. I felt strange to visit a place as a tourist where I had lived some time. In a way it helped me to plan our outings during the week and being a guide I ended up revisiting most of the major tourist places in London (Photo sets one and two). In that week’s time I managed to visit Warwick castle and Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’ birthplace.

Luechars air show

Fourth and final quarter was the pick among all as I paid a visit to home and a well deserved break of two and half weeks. And before my vacation, I got to witness an airshow at Luechars. That was my 2011 in terms of travel, a relatively dull one. But only to start the new year with a bang – we almost got stranded at the base station of Cairngorm mountain due to snow storm. But thanks to the staff of Cas bar at Cairngorm mountain who helped us to safely get back, await for more details.

Cricket to an Indian is what weather to a British – a conversation starter. If I’ve to be a bit superlative, I can say Cricket runs in most of the Indians’ blood. For a person like me who is one of those millions who follow cricket, visiting Lord’s cricket ground was a must. During my six months stay in London in 2009, I set out visiting places on weekends. At last when I roamed around in the Lord’s stadium, I was delighted. But at the same time, I was a bit disappointed to not to see Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid’s name on the honor board – who missed scoring a century by just five runs.

While it took fifteen years for Dravid to get a century at Lords, I was back again in Lords within 2 years – just to see Dravid’s name on the ‘Honor board’. But I chose a wrong day to visit the stadium – which was a match day and visitors are not allowed in the pavilion on match days. The match was between Berkshire and Hertfordshire counties.

Instead of getting to see the honor board, I had an opportunity to witness few deliveries from the commentary box. While there was a buzz in the commentary box taking in the beautiful view, it died down as the bowler started his stride for his delivery. The batsman tried chasing a wide one and edged it effortlessly. The ball flew between the wicket keeper and the first slip, amid the oohs and aahs coming out from everyone in the press box. The next delivery was a similar one to the first delivery and the batsman repeated the mistake again and edged it for the second time. This time the keeper was quick to react and pouched the ball. Watching a fall of wicket form the press box compensated with the missed chance to roaming around the pavilion.

Here is a view of the good old Lord’s pavilion from the stands.

Wishing all the readers of PAYANIGA, a very happy and prosperous new year. May peace, love and prosperity follow you always and forever!

Background image: A country road north of Aberdeen, leading to Balmedie.

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More than the display of Vulcans and F16s at the Luechars airshow, what interested me more was the slowest of all the planes, Catalina. Used widely during World War 2, Consolidated PBY Catalina is a flying boat – capable of land/take off both on land and water. Here are couple of photos of Catalina which I captured during the airshow.

And it took me a while to realise of all the flights, why the slowest one got me interested – it reminded me of the animated series Talespin :)

Background image: Temple gopuras (Jain basadis) on top of Mandharagiri, a small hillock near Tumkur

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Background image: Forth rail bridge, Edinburgh – a 2.5KMs long cantilever railway bridge over the Firth of Forth.

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Background image: Loch Ness, Inverness.

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Despite staying in Bangalore for a long time I never managed to go to Aero India, a biennial air show held in Yelahanka Air force station, Bangalore. When I got to know about airshow by Royal Air Force at Luechars, I couldn’t stop myself going there besides the bad weather. The day started with rain and visibility of just 100 meters when we started from Aberdeen. But we were fortunate enough as rain gave away. Though the parachute display was cancelled due to bad weather, we had a glimpse of a range of flights – The Red Arrows, Hawk T1 and Tucano T1 – all three from Royal Air Force, F16s from Dutch Air Force, Vulcans, Pitts, Catalina (flying boat) and Dornier Alpha Jet from French Air.

The excitement of witnessing my first airshow made me mess up with my camera settings and on top of that light was against us along with overcast sky. That resulted in very few considerably good photos of the metal birds. A friend mentioned that this RAF Leuchars Airshow was no where close to Aero India which happens every two years in Bangalore (Leuchars airshow is an one day event which happens every year, where as Aero India is a five day event).