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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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Sleepy Felines of the Himalayan Zoological Park, Gangtok

Spread over 230 Hectares, the Himalayan Zoological Park in Gangtok is surely one of the biggest zoos in India. I am not a big fan of zoos, but when one is as huge, well planned, and well maintained as this one, I have to appreciate it. We visited the zoo on an especially clear December afternoon, and found most of the animals busy having their siesta! I shall write more about the zoo later, but for now, let me share some of my images of the sleepy felines, which surely resented our intrusion....








The first and the last images are my personal favourites, and the reason for this post. Which ones do you like? 

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Location: Sikkim Himalayan Zoological Park, National Highway 310, Gangtok, Sikkim 737103, India

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