A World in a Grain of Sand

Photo of the Day

2012-01-21T13:01:00.000+05:30

Chalakudy river

Canon EOS 400D with EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6

More picture from Bhutan trip

2011-07-24T10:54:00.004+05:30

More pictures from a trip to Bhutan in September 2009.

Munnar

2011-06-22T23:02:00.005+05:30

Photographs from a trip to Munnar in May, 2011.

Mattupetty Dam Reservoir

Echo Point

Hydel Park

All photographs with Canon EOS 400D.

Washington State

2011-05-23T21:39:00.002+05:30

Snoqualmie Falls

Cottage in Bellevue Botanical Garden

Bellevue Botanical Garden

Stone Formation in Bellevue Botanical Garden

Photo of the day

2011-04-10T21:19:00.003+05:30

Misty Trees, Bhutan

Fire & Water - Varkala Beach

2011-02-20T17:18:00.005+05:30

Spent a very short vacation at the Deshadan Cliff and Beach resort in Varkala. The Varkala beach itself is by far the best beach near Trivandrum, better than Kovalam or Shankumugham beaches. Varkala beach seems to be more frequented by foreigners rather than locals, at least by the folks that we ran into while we were there. There are a large number of resorts in Varkala, suiting wide variety of budgets, all the way from five star hotels to mom and pop establishments.

I chose Deshadan based on their TripAdvisor ratings and reviewer comments and for their swimming pool and found it to be an excellent choice. The only negative was the time taken for preparing food, order well in advance to have lunch or dinner on time (breakfast is a buffet).

Deshadan is around 1/2 mile walk from the beach, there are other places right next to the beach if you prefer that. Deshadan has a very nice pool, and a Dhathri ayurvedic spa within the resort. Both the resort as well as the spa is very reasonably priced and the service is also really good.

All photographs taken with a Canon EOS 400D and the Canon EF 70-200 F/4 L IS USM lens.

Photo of the day

2011-02-12T22:51:00.002+05:30

Photo of the day

2011-01-21T23:40:00.000+05:30

Thorny Thoughts

Photo of the day

2011-01-18T23:05:00.002+05:30

Isolation

Butterfly

2010-12-29T21:24:00.003+05:30

Butterfly on flower. Shot in Bhutan.

Photo of the day

2010-12-28T20:54:00.002+05:30

Alaskan Brown Bear Exhibit in American Museum of Natural History, New York

Photo of the day

2010-12-25T14:18:00.002+05:30

Statue of Liberty

2010-12-16T22:16:00.003+05:30

Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty photographed from Staten Island Ferry. Canon EOS 400D with EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 lens.

Ramoji Film City

2010-11-13T18:46:00.006+05:30

Just back from a wonderful team offsite at Ramoji Film City. Ramoji Film City is the largest integrated film studio complex in the world spread over 2000 acres situated around 25 km South-East of Hyderabad.

We stayed at the luxury hotel Sitara located inside the film city during the two day event, each day consisted of "official" activities during the day followed by buffet dinner and party in the night. The regular shows of Ramoji Film City had a really eerie impact when viewed in the night and all of us enjoyed it, even those who had seen it before in daytime on prior trips.

One of the highlights of the trip was hearing Mr Ramoji Rao talk about his life and experiences and how he came to launch Eenadu newspaper, E-TV television network and the film city.

Click on the pictures to view them in high resolution.

Detail on the wall in Mughal Gardens

They put on quite a show for us ...

The Mughal Gardens looked absolutely resplendent in the night

The Mughal architecture, gardens, lawn, fountains, waterways and colored lights blended perfectly to create a visual treat.

Detail on one of the many fountains

The full fountain

Lighted walkway next to the Mughal Gardens

Manged to cover only a fraction of the film city in the time we were there, definitely a place worth spending more time to explore.

All photographs taken with a Panasonic Lumix FH20 and processed in Lightroom 3.0. While I did not take my D-SLR due to the pain of carrying it around and safeguarding it while participating in all the activities, the FH20 did quite a decent job and I fixed the noise due to the smaller sensor and the high-ISO night shots in Lightroom.

Dawn on Himalayan Peaks

2010-10-30T23:39:00.003+05:30

Dawn on Himalayan Peaks

Dawn breaks on Himalayan peaks. Shot while ascending Kalapathar from Gorak Shep during Everest Base Camp Trek in May 2008. Mount Everest is not in this picture, it is slightly off to the left.

Portrait - Akshitha

2010-10-24T15:29:00.004+05:30

Akshitha

Canon EOS 400D with Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 lens, 1/100s at f/1.8, ISO 100. This lens is Canon's cheapest, but from an image quality perspective a really good one, not to mention extremely fast at f/1.8. On a 1.6X FOV crop sensor like the one on 400D, the 50mm standard becomes a great 80mm portrait lens.

Birds in Abstract

2010-10-17T17:04:00.004+05:30

Went over my collection of pictures from Kumarakom trip and worked on a few bird shots in Lightroom. Here is the result.

Valley of Flowers

2010-08-07T16:59:00.001+05:30

Photographs from a trek to Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand, India. Read my trip planning post for more details on itinerary and schedule.

Click on the photographs to see them in full size.

The trek was organized by the Karnataka Mountaineering Association (KMA) and was lead by Vasumathy Srinivasan and Srivatsa. We were a team of 27 people, the most amazing thing about the team was that we had three generations of one family on the trek, with the grandfather being 92 years old and the father in his sixties. Although the grandfather took the assistance of pony and the dolly (three to four people carrying a chair fitted with long arms), his enduring spirit of exploration, fitness and alertness were an inspiration to us all.

I joined the team from Bangalore at Delhi and we then travelled by overnight train to Haridwar and then by bus to Govindghat.

The roads to Govindghat follow the Alakananda river and are extremely treacherous to say the least. Landslides are very frequent and we had to wait on multiple instances for new landslides to be cleared up. The roads and well maintained (for the area), probably due to the army presence and their supply requirements.

Valley of Flowers and Hemkund Sahib are both accessed from the town of Gangaria. There are no roads to Gangaria suitable for vehicles, one has to trek up 14 KMs from Govindghat to Gangaria before traveling to Valley of Flowers or Hemkund. Large number of ponies are available for hire for those to do not prefer to walk or for your luggage, one can also hire people to carry you up on a chair on a person’s back or on 3 to 4 people’s shoulders.

The route up from Gangaria. Shortly after this comes the diversion to Valley of Flowers (3 KM to the valley) or to Hemkund Sahib (6 KMs to Hemkund).

The entire landscape is dotted with streams carrying glacial melt water – extremely cool and tasty!

This nice big waterfall can be seen once you walk up from Gangaria towards the diversion for Valley of Flowers or Hemkund.

Walking up from Gangaria towards the Valley of Flowers.

Initial part of the trek to Valley of Flowers is through this verdant forest with the sunlight creeping through the tall trees and sounds of insects and birds.

Rivers and streams are a constant companion throughout the trek.

We were blessed with a glorious day sans rain on the trek to Valley of Flowers which from what I hear is not a very common occurrence during this time of the year.

I have seen and photographed similar flowers while trekking in Tende, France. I’m no botanist, but I guess these are the same flowers.

Guru pausing to take a photograph while I take one of him from above!

The Valley was made popular by Frank Smythe who accidently chanced upon it while returning from a summit expedition to mount Kamet in 1931.

In his book Kamet conquered, Frank S Smythe nick named the Bhyundar Valley as the Valley of Flowers.

We met quite a few people during the initial stretch, but as we walked further in towards the glacier and river bed, we met fewer and fewer people. The trek to Hemkund on the other hand is choke full of pilgrims and ponies and mules and dhabas (tea stalls).

The Valley is stunningly beautiful with the flowers and the green carpet crisscrossed by streams and overlooked by icy glacial mountain peaks and billowing clouds. The status of a protected natural park (and a UNESCO World Heritage Site) ensures that the pristine nature of the Valley is preserved. One cannot stay or camp inside and have to return the same day.

The grave of Joan Margaret Legge in the Valley of Flowers. She was sent by Edinburgh’s Royal Botanical Garden to study the plants in the valley and fell to her death from the mountain slopes while collecting flowers. She was buried the valley as per her sisters wish and the monument erected by her sister has the following words:

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills

From whence cometh my help”

On Friday, we started at 5 AM from Gangaria to Hemkund Sahib while the first light of day was breaking. Unfortunately, it developed into a very misty and rainy morning, so I could not get any photographs of Hemkund Sahib lake. The visibility as we reached the top was only about 20 to 30 feet and we were also not allowed to go around the lake to take a photo of the Gurudwara and Lakshman temple from the far side of the lake.

I was able to capture sunrise on the peaks as we started the trek up. It is a 6 KM trek to Hemkund Sahib from where the route splits for Valley of Flowers and Hemkund. In these 6 kilometers, one goes from around 8000 ft of altitude to around 13,000 ft, so it is quite a steep ascend. For the final 2 KM stretch there are two options – the regular zig zag route that the ponies take or a steep flight of steps. Few of us took the steps and our overall climbing time from Gangaria to Hemkund was around 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Blue Poppy on the way up to Hemkund Sahib. The owner of the hotel we stayed in at Gangaria mentioned that this flower was also present in Valley of Flowers earlier, but now could be found only on the heights of Hemkund Sahib. Another flower present in abundance on the way to Hemkund is the “Brahma Kamal”, however, I could not get a nice shot of any due to the mist and inaccessibility.

Once we reached Hemkund, we had tea and breakfast served for free by volunteers at the Gurudwara.

Took the long route down from Hemkund and walked leisurely with Nethra, Guru and Himajith while discussing movies, music and books.

On Saturday, we visited Mana village which is the last Indian village along the Indo Tibetan border, it even had a “Last Tea Shop of India”. There is a significant army presence from the ITBP (Indo Tibetan Border Patrol) as this area is of strategic importance to India’s integrity.

On Sunday, we visited Auli – a ski resort being constructed up amongst the clouds. We took the 4 KM ropeway up from Joshimath (250 KMs from Rishikesh) strung over 10 towers with a stupendous view of the surrounding mountains and valley.

From the ropeway station at Auli, we trekked a few KMs up the mountain into a verdant forest and to a small temple located deep within the quite solitude of the forest.

I love this picture!

It’s ironic that most of my best flower pictures were taken outside of the Valley of Flowers!

Prashant checking out his model car discovered on the beautiful forest trek up from Auli.

A fallen tree gathers moss unlike a rolling stone …

Mushrooms aplenty!

The team sitting near the temple listing to Nethra’s beautiful voice, Nethra and her mom are both trained Karnatic classical vocalists.

The Flowers of the Valley – young and old!

Aerial view of the road to Auli from the ropeway cabin.

Sunset at Birahi, we stayed in a resort next to the river.

Morning mist embracing the treetops.

All photographs taken with Canon EOS 400D and Canon EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS USM Lens, shot in RAW mode and processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.

Lightroom 3 and Windows Live Writer

2010-07-24T16:28:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Jayaram and Jagan, I have now added Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 as a part of my digital workflow. I went back and picked up one of my older photographs taken during a trip to the Nehru Zoo (see earlier post) in Hyderabad and processed it in Lightroom to see what I can make of it. This is the first time I’m using Lightroom although I did download the Beta long back. All the photos that I have posted to my blog previously were processed in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional software for EOS users, it was free and Canon did a great job of adding essential features over a period of time.

The picture was originally imported from the camera using Canon EOS Utility (from now on I will probably switch to using LR3 directly), processed in Lightroom and then the border/frame/copyright added using FastStone Image Viewer. Although LR3 added copyright embedding feature, it does not allow me to create frames like these for embedding copyrights. LR/Mogrify 2 is an option, but I will stick to LR3 + FastStone for now.

It has been less than 12 hours since I installed Lightroom, so I have not had a chance to really explore all the capabilities – I’m sure that’s going to take me many months if at all I even manage to do it. The overall experience has been great so far with most of the usage being very intuitive and fitting in well with the existing Canon software based workflow that I had. But I do really wish Adobe supported HDR in some form in Lightroom itself rather than including that only in the (much) more expensive Photoshop. I’m sure HDR is going to become really mainstream, especially with many cameras building that capability in the camera itself and optimizing at the sensor level.

This is also a test post for me to work out the settings in Windows Live Writer (I’m using the latest Beta) to get the look that I want for my posts. The picture upload option in Blogger is a pain and one has to upload 5 photos at a time and they all go to the top of the page while editing after which I have to cut and paste and rearrange them. Windows Live Writer on the other hand allows one to type and insert pictures with absolute freedom. And it’s free! You can download it from here along with some other great Microsoft tools including a fully featured anti-virus and anti-malware solution (full disclosure – I work for Microsoft).

The only issue that I have found with Live Writer so far is that in the Preview mode it does not show the latest posts, I am not sure if it is by design or due to some compatibility issues with Blogger. This does not seem to impact the publishing of the blog post or the preview of the post I am creating (except for the post date being shown incorrectly), so I am fine with it.

Now the only thing remaining is to get a 23” LCD with a full HD resolution! Dell 2309W looks like a good option with a higher than HD resolution, height adjustment, 2 MP webcam, main negative being that it uses TN instead of an IPS LCD panel and the price. Availability and price seems to be an issue for any LCD above 21.5” in India.

Upcoming Trek – Valley of Flowers

2010-07-24T13:15:00.001+05:30

I’ll be leaving 26th July for a 9 day trek to the Valley of Flowers National Park in Uttarakhand on the organized by the Karnataka Mountaineering Association (KMA). This high altitude Himalayan valley is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and renowned for its flora and fauna, including many endangered ones. The Valley of Flowers was declared a National Park in 1982 and is located in Uttarakhand in the upper reaches of Gharwal on the Zanskar range of Himalayas.

The Valley of Flowers was “re”-discovered by a British mountaineer (Frank S Smythe) in 1931 by accident when he lost his way while returning from a successful expedition to Mt Kamet, he subsequently wrote a book on it titled “Valley of Flowers”. The park is open only in summer during the months between June and October, and is covered by heavy snow for the rest of the year.

We will also be visiting Hemkund Sahib (Lake of Ice) where the high altitude lake Hemkund is located at 4329m. This is an important pilgrimage center for Hindus (Sri Lakshmi Mandir) and for Sikhs (Gurudwara Hemkund Sahib).

Itinerary

Day	Date	Program
1	26 July 2010	Arrive at Delhi and take Mussouri Express to Haridwar
2	27 July 2010	Arrive at Haridwar and onward to Joshimath by bus
3	28 July 2010	Joshimath to GovindGhat by bus and trek to Gangaria (3048m)
4	29 July 2010	Trek from Gangaria to Valley of Flowers (3962m) and back
5	30 July 2010	Trek from Gangaria to Hemkund Sahib (4329m) and back
6	31 July 2010	Trek from Gangaria to GovindGhat and onward to Badrinath by bus
7	1 August 2010	Badrinath to Auli and onward to Birahi by bus
8	2 August 2010	Birahi to Rishikesh by bus and catch train to Delhi
9	3 August 2010	Arrive at Delhi

Map

Map courtesy moreAdventures.

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

2010-04-27T21:03:00.004+05:30

Photographs from a trip to Kodaikanal, in Tamil Nadu, India.

Madurai is closest airport to Kodaikanal at 135 kilometers, however I traveled via Coimbatore that is around 170 kilometers from Kodaikanal since there were no direct flights from Hyderabad to Madurai. There are very few buses that ply from Coimbatore directly to Kodai, in fact, I believe there is only one that leaves from Ukkadam bus stand at 10 AM in the morning. However, there are plenty of buses from Coimbatore (from Ukkadam bus stand, you can get a pre-paid taxi from Airport to Ukkadam for Rs 250) to town of Palani (every 10 minutes or so), and from Palani there are hourly buses during the day to Kodai. It takes around 2.5 hours from Coimbatore to Palani and another 3 hours from Palani to Koadi uphill via the winding Ghat road. Note that these are local buses that ply between towns and will be quite crowded, plus unless you can speak a bit of the local language (Tamil), it would be hard to identify the right bus to get on to. On the plus side, they are quite cheap – on an average it would cost you Rs 30 (less than $1) for each segment of the journey.

Coaker’s Walk is a beautiful 1 KM stretch of pathway along the side of Mount Nebo and offers a great view of the valley.

Pillar rock can be reached by an 8 KM drive from the Kodai bus stand, reminds me of the “Hanging Mountains” from Avatar.

“Green” windows of the Woody’s restaurant in Woodlands Resort, Kodaikanal.

Bryant Park is a very well maintained botanical garden located around half a kilometer from the Kodai bus stand.

Nehru Zoological Park - Hyderabad

2010-03-28T17:06:00.005+05:30

A bit of relaxation in the park

Not on talking terms

White Tiger

Emu caught on a bad hair day

Tigers might be history soon

The eternal struggle of Life

Photographs taken at Nehru Zoological Park in Hyderabad with Canon EOS 400D and Canon EF 70-200mm F/4 L IS USM Lens combined with Tamron 1.4X TC. I did not get to go on the safari this time, all shots are from the regular circuit around the zoo.

There are less the 1500 tigers left in the wild in India. White tigers are not separate sub-species of the tiger, but ones with a regressive gene leading to pale colouration (not albinos).

Photo of the Day

2010-03-07T14:53:00.003+05:30

Akshita in a pensive mood on her third birthday

Photo of the Day

2009-12-30T19:22:00.002+05:30

The Birds

Was looking at the cloud covered peaks when the birds flew out of nowhere, had just enough time to raise the camera and fire off one quick shot. Reminds me of the Hitchcock movie.

Canon EOS 400D, exposure of 1/125s @ F8, ISO 400. Shot in Bhutan.

Photo of the Day

2009-11-16T22:34:00.002+05:30

Fields

Shot in Bhutan with Canon EOS 400D and Canon EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. Exposure of 1/160s @ F8, ISO 400.

A World in a Grain of Sand

Photo of the Day

More picture from Bhutan trip

Munnar

Washington State

Photo of the day

Fire & Water - Varkala Beach

Photo of the day

Photo of the day

Photo of the day

Butterfly

Photo of the day

Photo of the day

Statue of Liberty

Ramoji Film City

Dawn on Himalayan Peaks

Portrait - Akshitha

Birds in Abstract

Valley of Flowers

Lightroom 3 and Windows Live Writer

Upcoming Trek – Valley of Flowers

Itinerary

Map

Links

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

Nehru Zoological Park - Hyderabad

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day

Photo of the Day