Ladakh Vacation - Day 1
We were leaving everything behind - well for 9 days anyway - our work, the media, the Internet, the swine flu and the mosquitoes in the Kingfisher Red bus who were hell-bent on kissing us good-bye.
On the Delhi-Leh flight, the landscape below changes before the cabin crew drags the food trolly to your seat. In the beginning, we saw mountains that lacked my notions of Himalayan grandeur - inferior specimens disowned and banished by the Himalayas. But once you cross Shimla, you start to see what you’d probably consider no-so-distant cousins to Mt. Everest. Most mountains were covered in snow. Wisps of clouds cast sharp shadows on them.
Leh Bound
Leh Bound
Leh Bound
As we got ready for descent, snow-capped peaks went into the background and their place was taken by mountains of varied colors and textures - barren but strikingly beautiful.
Moments before landing in Leh
Just before landing in Leh
The luxury of being able to go from Delhi (239 m / 784 ft. above mean sea level) to Leh (3,500 m / 11, 483 ft. above mean sea level) within 90 minutes, comes at the risk of altitude sickness. You won’t feel a thing immediately - in fact you’ll welcome the crisp mountain air after having inhaled the re-re-circulated airplane air for over 90 minutes. But a few minutes there and you’ll realize that your breathing is suddenly not a sub-concious activity you perform in the background.
Our guest house was a mere 10 minutes drive from the airport and despite being in the main area of the town, was nicely secluded from the hubbub of tourists and traffic. We had our breakfast at the guest house’s roof-top café in stunned silence - it is hard to talk with a view like this:
View from the guest house
View from the guset house
The guest house also had a well-tended garden. Most plants have a 3-4 month window of survival and the flowers and plants here were determined to make the most of it; even more than I was determined to make the most of our first day indoors:
Almost a flower
Buds
And There Was Light
A hasty visit to Chikmaglur during Monsoons yielded a few pictures and a travelogue; which recently got published (text by wife). Here is my favorite from the trip:
And There Was Light
Also, just came back from a 9 day trip to Ladakh - rather dragged my body back - the soul continues to linger somewhere in the Himalayas.
Most people in India are born in August..
…asserted the wife on her birthday. Well I pulled out some data from Cricinfo’s database of Indian players and it seems like most of our cricketers were born in December! (This includes anyone who ever played cricket for India):
MonthDecember October November September January May March July August April June February |
Count867 709 688 679 488 453 449 438 438 422 391 334 |
But then cricketers in India are very special people to start with - aren’t they?
PJ
What is common between an Auto driver in Bangalore and a Nikon D90? One-And-A-Half.
p.s. Don’t worry if you didn’t get it. The audience for this PJ is probably in single digit.
Notes from a Coorg visit in June
The monsoon is supposed to be at its peak in June/July in Coorg. No such thing this year. An occasional drizzle which would threaten to grow into something worthier but would stop just short is all we got. Still, it’s all very beautiful.
We weren’t the only ones eager for rain…
…and we did get a drizzle soon. The dreamy soft-focus here is caused by a few stray droplets on the lens. These are pomegranate buds/flowers.
The paddy fields near our home-stay collected whatever little rain that did fall.
Everything looked fresh and squeaky clean.
The day ended with a glorious sunset.
We stopped by at the monastary at Kushalnagar on our way back.
Realized I had never looked straight up before. Was pleasantly surprised to see the chandelier use fluorescent lamps. The two shades flanking it continue to use the lamp’s original Edison edition.
Chandelier at the Bylakuppe Monastery
p.s. The new camera still hasn’t seen much action. The photos here are from the old EOS 350D.
Hello Canon EOS 50D
Plonked a considerable sum of money on a new camera. Was looking for one with a better sensor (less noise for higher ISO), better focussing system, better shutter performance (1/8000 and 6.3 fps burst) and overall better handling (weather proofing, better viewfinder). EOS 50D fit the bill nicely. Seriously contemplated a switch to Nikon but it had the significant disadvantage of being incompatible with my existing collection of lenses - besides it would’ve got me fewer megapixels and no weather proofing for more money.
Yes, it doesn’t do HD movies - even the entry level EOS 500D does that these days; but I am not in it for moving pictures. And then, I can make up for my camera’s inability to shoot video with html and javascript. Here are a couple of studies in waltz time - performed by anonymous cast in front of the camera shop where the camera’s burst mode performance was being tested (very grainy ISO 3200):
The links will open in a new window. Give the page some time to load and once the pictures start moving, hover over the them to see tooltips (and to slow the action down a bit). And please use a respectable browser (i.e. not IE).