A Wandering Mind

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Showing posts from November, 2011

More Temples at Pattadakal

The World Heritage Site of Pattadakal deserves more than just a cursory glance. There is so much to see and appreciate, and even during our short visit to the place, I clicked so many photos that I found it impossible to put all of them together in one post! Here are my first two posts on the temple complex at Pattadakal - Silhouettes of Temples at Pattadakal Getting Started with the Temple Tour Continuing with our walk through the temple complex, we next arrived at the Chandrashekhara Temple . The plain and simple structure is the one which attracts least number of visitors, and consequently, is empty and easy to photograph!

Pattadakal - Getting Started with the Temple tour

Our trip to Pattadakal was a hurried one, and we had time only to visit some of the main temples. Come along with me as I go over the same path once more..... We started at the northern end of the temple complex, and this was the board which greeted us...

Skywatch Friday - Silhouettes of Temples at Pattadakal

Pattadakal is on my mind...It s been almost a year since I visited the World Heritage Site, but the memories of the consummate artistic talent are as fresh as if it were yesterday! Our first glimpse of the temples at Pattadakal .. the temple towers stand out tall against the clear sky..

Memories from Corbett Safari Resort

While on a vacation, I usually don't like to stay in a resort, preferring instead to wander and discover the area I am visiting. On my recent visit to Corbett, there were so many things planned that we spent very little time in our rooms, which is just the way I liked it! However, there are some things about the Club Mahindra Safari Resort which I shall always remember.... such as the towel art.....

Sunrise and Sunset for Skywatch Friday

Considering that Samhith's school i s extremely miserly about holidays, we had completely forgotten that Guru Nanak Jayanti would bring us a day off. By the time we realised it, it was too late to plan something properly. But some frantic googling and lots of phone calls later, we finally headed out, before sunrise, on our unplanned, last-minute-holiday to Bhimshankar! The trip was special because it had been a long time since we had headed out of town on an impulse, but even more because, Bhimshankar, home to one of the 12 Jyotirlingams (of which I have now seen 10) had been on my radar for a long long time, but it had eluded me for so many years! The Lord seemed to want to make up for all the times my trip had been postponed, because the trip was memorable, not just because of the temple, but because of so many other experiences... You will have to wait to read about them, though, till I manage to sit down long enough to write all of them down.... Meanwhile, here are some phot...

Guest Post - India, the Coastal Delight

Given that India is the largest peninsular country in the world, there is a vast coast line with the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea sweeping in on three sides of the nation. When Goa found itself on the travel map of the world as a fervent hippie beach-joint in the 1960s it wasn’t long before the rest of the coastal territories were explored and India became a go to place for getting a long lasting tan, unexplored private stretches and of course delectable sea food. Starting from the Western edge of the country, we skirt all the way through to the east, exploring the best beach destinations in India

Jim Corbett Museum

The association between Jim Corbett and Corbett National Park is much deeper than just the name. For anyone familiar with Corbett’s books, it is impossible to think of the area without remembering his encounters with man eaters. Even as we wander around the forest, hoping we come across the tiger, we cannot but imagine how it would have been, a hundred years ago, when tigers roamed free, and they were hunted by one and all! The efforts of Jim Corbett and those of his ilk are all the more important and relevant when we realize that in spite of the official count of 164 tigers in the reserve, it is so difficult to see a single one! On my recent visit to Corbett as part of the Club Mahindra Bloggers Trip , we set out in search of Jim Corbett, and what better place to begin that at his erstwhile home, now turned into a museum?

A Special Get-Together on a Special Date...

The magic of numbers or the significance of dates has never held any fascination for me. As far as I am concerned, a date is special, not for the combination of digits, but the events which make it memorable. It was thus, not the date but the event and the location that attracted me – the Postcrossing Meet at the G.P.O. Mumbai on 11.11.2011!

In Search of the Elusive Tiger at Corbett

In the year 1936 , under the influence of the then governor of the United Provinces, Sir Malcom Hailey, India got its first national park. Aptly, the new sanctuary was named after its founder as Hailey National Park, and so it remained for the next twenty years. There were others involved in the formation of the sanctuary, but none more so than Edward James Corbett, or Jim Corbett, as he was more popularly known. Born and raised in the area, Corbett had an intimate relationship with the reserve and its animals. A keen naturalist and photographer, Corbett knew the forest as well or even better than the locals, and he is most well known for ridding the area of some of its most notorious man eaters. It was through his efforts that the national park took shape, and after his death in 1955, the park was renamed after him as Corbett National Park. Corbett was well aware, and extremely concerned about the need to safeguard the tiger population, and fittingly, it was here that Project Tiger...

Sunset at Nainital

On my recent visit to Corbett as part of the Club Mahindra Bloggers Trip , we spent some time at Nainital. After roaming around the streets for a while, we took the ropeway to get a glimpse of the snow covered peaks of the Himalayas. The ropeway idea was just a lark, to spend some extra time at Nainital, but it turned out to be full of surprises - from the beautiful aerial view of the Naini Lake.....

Finding beauty in unexpected places...

October is over and November is here. Before I know it, the year will be over! And I am nowhere near catching up with all the posts I have to write. October brought in so much travel, from the unexpected Club Mahindra Bloggers Meet to another unexpected Diwali trip to Sringeri. There is so much I want to write, but the words will take some time to come. Meanwhile, I just realised that the blog has been left alone for too long without a post, so I will be posting some random images from my trips..... We were on our way to Nainital, when we stopped to take pics of the wonderful view of the hills and valleys. But as we clicked and posed for others, these weeds by the roadside caught my eye. They are just weeds - unwanted and un-cared for. Yet, they grow profusely wherever they get the chance! If we see them in our garden, we pluck them and throw them off, but look closer and see the innate beauty, the perfect geometrical shapes. Remember drawing flowers with a compass i...