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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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Spot That Bird! White Cheeked Barbet

Sitting on the balcony of my room at the Club Mahindra Kodagu Valley (Coorg), I heard this bird long before I saw it. From this pic, can you guess why?





This is a White Cheeked Barbet, a common bird in these parts, but nevertheless, a lifer for me.


The White Cheeked Barbet is endemic to the Western Ghats, and the hills around it. They are frugivorous, which means, they mostly eat fruits, though they also eat insects at times. Interestingly, Wikipedia tells me that they are arboreal, which means they live on the trees, and rarely visit the ground - not even to drink water, like some other birds. They get most of their water intake through their fruity diet! 


These birds play an important role in the forest as seed dispersal, and, at times, pollination agents. Thankfully, they still seem to be plentiful, and not endangered. 



Capturing one on camera, however, turned out to be a difficult task. I eventually managed to click these pics later in the day when I left my room and went wandering around, looking for it! 


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Location: Kodagu, Karnataka, India

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