When Leh-ting go isn’t easy!
Second time in a row. A bunch of over-enthusiastic, over the age of four-O, crazy albeit, friends for 26 years decided to go on a high-altitude reunion! An overland exploratory trip for 12 days to the ‘land of the mystic lamas’- Ladakh! This time it was after a hiatus of three years, the previous one being at the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal. Destination: Ladakh. Objective: Differed from person to person, ranging from ‘let’s run away from reality’ (me), ‘let’s test if my training was worth it’ , ‘let’s test my mental strength, since...
Read MoreLearning the ‘ABC’ of the Himalayas
Annapurna Base Camp (ABC)- the very foothills of the world’s tenth deadliest mountain. Honestly, the one year in between committing for this and actually setting foot into the flight that’ll take me to Kathmandu, I’ve had ample chills- even emotional chills- by just thinking of this Himalayan eight-thousander. But that afternoon of 13 Nov, there I was- standing right before it. The small base camp, with a small canteen and a few rooms to lodge trekkers is located in the middle of an amphitheater of high peaks. I overheard one of the trekkers ( from another group) say...
Read MoreWhat Melbourne did to me…
They say first impressions are always the ones that stay for life. And, its true- as much it is for people as it is for places you visit. But, then things turn around too. And shake up your mettle. Good to bad, or bad to good. For me, Melbourne was a bit like that. It mixed me up. Stirred me. Mostly like a good martini. But shaken, at times too. Past midnight, I walk into the little apartment, right in the centre of town. An apartment on the 42nd floor… where at night, the window transformed into a twinkling array of fairy-light dotted skyscrapers and for the new nights to...
Read MorePortraits from Nandgaon- “Nand Kishor Gosvami”
What attracts me best about mythology is that whether it’s fact or fiction, it lands up as a fabulous story! I don’t know about others, but I like to think that the emotions and its resultant actions are very true. I am often prompted to think – are these purely fiction? Do they affect human life in day to day situations; do people like to read emotions as reality? These often provoke questions in my realistic mind, and I find that stimulation exhilarating! Nandgaon is the hometown of Shri Krishna and His brother, Balram. It’s the place where the divine brothers live...
Read MorePortraits from Nandgaon- “Lali” and “Sunehri”
I have a knack for stories , specially the ones which were heavily infused with mythology. As much as these stories entertain me , they also leave me with several revelations. And in that league of entertainers and revealers, Krishna is my hero(or heroine!) His Raas-leela is the father of all love-affairs, that can justly be summed as ‘It’s better to have love and lust, than never love at all!’ So powerful and aspirational was Raas-leela, that mythology endorses Shiva bathing in the Yamuna, to become a gopi (a milkmaid), so that he could dance the Raas-leela with Krishna –...
Read MorePortraits from Nandgaon- “Manohar”
Whenever I have travelled, I have always wondered who they are and what the pictures in my frames do in real lives. What might their lives be like? Who do they live with? What will they do from this moment onwards? What do they do in the evenings? What is their favourite fruit? And, I have always craved and my hands have itched to carve out a fictional life for them. So here I am…. in my first attempt to do that. This will be the first of a series of 15/20 really short biographies of characters my lenses spotted. Unreal names, with realistically spun stories. My backdrop is that of...
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