travels

Its been a mad mad week...with my shoot with 3 different models in one shift!(had an amazing session) and then my travel to Chennai with a kid for a co-passenger. Right now am getting in touch with ASI for permissions to shoot in some beautiful temples in this part of the country. Let's see how that goes.

~S~

Varkala

I have always noticed that every time I wanted to backpack and travel to some off-beaten part of the country, I have always been stuck with lack of information about the place, even after maximum optimisation of internet help! Hence to do my bit to all those backpackers of the world, here is my first bit of information to one of the most beautiful places that I visited recently in Kerala. Destination: Varkala (had heard so much about this place and hence decided to visit there before leaving Ooty for good). One good thing, about the whole trip was my roomie decided to accompany me, and she is a mallu (well not the best of them, but she could make few sentences which at times saved us from a lot of trouble)

Mode of transport: well here's the adventure part of it, considering we were in Ooty, it took us multiple changes before we got to Varkala. To cut a long story short:

Trip 1: Ooty to Coimbatore (left at 16:00 hrs), it was unfortunately a 5 hour journey to the Ukkadam busstand in Coimbatore. Bus fare: Rs 36/-
Trip 2: Coimbatore to Palakkad. It was one and a half hour journey, ideally for single woman travelers, I would suggest you hit Palakkad before 20:00hrs, not that the place was very unsafe or anything, it just well... looked spooky to me. We took a bus from Palakkad to Trivandrum. It is roughly an 8hr journey and there are buses plying between Trivandrum and Palghat every hour. Another option is to take a bus from Thrissur, it cuts your journey time by 2 hours. However, we took a bus from Palghat, bus fare was quite steep for the comfort we received during our journey. Bus fare: Rs 450/- per person
Trip 3: After ignoring the persistent conductor who tried to convince me that he would show the way to Varkala and accompany us for the entie trip, I figured out that our bus passed via varkala before reaching Trivandrum, it's just that it was too early in the morning (around 4.30?), and I didn't want to end up looking lost in that place at that hour. We reached Trivandrum at 6:00 in the morning. So I took a bus which went to a place called Kallambalam, from where Varkala was a ten minute drive. Beautiful drive, with lush landscape on either side. The bus was very clean and the people were friendly and helpful. Bus Fare: Rs 10/-. Journey time: 1 hour
Trip 4: Oblivious to the stares we were getting at the tea shop, had my hot cuppa chai and after having inquired with several people there, we took another bus From Kallambalam to Varkala. A very bumpy drive at that, we finally reached our destination in fifteen mintues
Trip 5: We had to take an auto from Varkala to get to the actual beach side. Now here's the thing, there are two parts of Varkala beach with staying options. One is the cliff side and the other is the beach side. Going by our intuitions, we chose to stay at the cliff side with a beautiful sea view and amazing sun-sets. Auto charge - Rs 50, after much bargaining.
The only place, I had read about in Varkala was Funky Art Cafe, thats the only place, mentioned across all sites on the web. So decided to hit that place. They have a lovely make-do coffee shop and highly functional huts, with a bed and private bathroom. They charged us Rs 150/- per night and we weren't sure how long we were going to stay there, so took up the cheapest option around. We slept for a while and then hit the beautiful beach, its clean, unpredictable yet safe with lifeguards around to warn us on and off. Three days just went by swiftly, in a perpetual state of trance. The guys who work in Funky art cafe were overtly helpful with everything that we wanted. Apparently none of these guy have the license to serve liquor, but you know how it works in India, in some places beer was referred to as "mutka chai" whilst in others beer was "below the table" commodity. Food is quite expensive here, and in case your looking at a three day meal, its going to cost you anywhere between Rs 300 - Rs 600 per day.

Apparently we were there during the off-season, so not too many tourists were around, which suited us perfectly fine and hence accommodations were really cheap. All hotels and cottages are in the same line as Funky art cafe and they all serve to different array of tourists based on their budgets. There were a couple of very cozy wooden cottages, couple of them with spa, jacuzzi, swimming pool and the works, but all these guys came to funky art cafe in the evening, as these guys keep coming up with impromptu jamming sessions every other day.

Night life is not as exciting as in Goa, there are no swanky pubs or clubs that you can go to. But I think that's exactly what makes this place unique, you soak into their way of living so comfortably. You just have all the time in the world to do what you want. Its perhaps one of those unique places were you decide how fast you want time to move. I although would strongly suggest, you carry ample amount of mosquito repellent cream and cash in abundance as mmost of these places do not believe in plastic.

If you visit during the season time (sept - february) small trek down the cliff of Varkala leads you to what the locals call as "black beach", a small walk into the sea would lead you to a small island of black rocks, were you can sit around and watch the sun-sets, it sure would have been beautiful to see that!

A friend of ours from college, "Ro" joined us at Varkala and we decided to head to Alleppey for a night and head back to our respective destinations post that trip. I was headed to Gurvayoor, "Pi" and "Ro" were headed back to Ooty. We took a train from Varkala, I have no idea where this train was headed to or how much we paid, yes that's how baked we were!!! All I know till now is, we left Varkala around 15:00 hrs and reached Kollam at 20:00 hrs. We then took an auto to reach our guest house, in Alleppey. If I'm right I think the places's name is Evergreen resort and they charged us Rs 600/- for a night! Yeah it was expensive! but a very clean place.

I just wish we had stayed a little longer in Alleppey, sweet of "Ro" to have chased down the last bar open in Alleppey at 22:00 hrs and got all of us beer, we were happily sitting on one of those over bridges above the backwaters you find all over Alleppey and sipping our beer talking till midnight. We had booked for an early morning boat ride around the Alleppey backwaters so hit the bed early that night!

The backwater trip was completely disappointing, none of us were impressed, had heard so much about it and was truly miffed. Maybe it was not the best of organisers or the best part of Alleppey. So yeah downed our sorrows with a couple of bottles of toddy (& Rs 50 each) and headed back home.

I love the way this trip unwinded itself, and have been doing more such trips recently and thoroughly enjoy the time I get for myself!!! Do mail me if you need more info on Varkala.

And as for how beautiful these places were, I'll let my pictures do the talking as usual :-)



One of the guys working at Funky Art Cafe - that's the fish my friends devoured for dinner





The maid, who cleaned our rooms and fancied herself with a beer bottle for the poseys :-)





This was part of a competition I entered my image for. Burning Embers was the competition's name.
And my message was "Stepping back from rising water levels is not going to help you. ACT NOW"





ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ



Lazy afternoons of Varkala while inebriated!





As I said earlier, glorious sunsets of Varkala



There was some construction work happening here...and the entire place had this "magical lighting"




Row of shops in the line of funky art cafe, overlooking the sea


PS: Thanks Sachin for sharing the link for increasing the image size, this is a lot better, am still fiddling around and learning in the process!

~s~

My Sabbatical

When I had quit my last job and bummed at home I decided that if I were to sit back at home and do nothing, I'd probably do that effortlessly sans guilt in fact with immense pleasure. I was looking at putting my time to some judicious use before it got too late. So when me and my husband were looking at various prospects, I was able to effortlessly narrow down my choice to study at Light & Life academy. For various reasons besides the obvious one's being, Idyllic location to have unostentatious introspection, renowned and familiar set of people managing the institution and of course my fondness to live in the hills at least once, validated my decision. My love for photography happened at a very very late point of time in my life, it also coincides with the first time ever I got a camera for myself. I'm thankful to my previous job and my trip across the coast of Maharashtra for this.

The space that photography as a medium gave me to express my thoughts, and the sustenance of such creativity through a fairly viable option were my driving points in taking up this course. Indubitably, the course was all said and done expensive, but I thoroughly enjoyed my learning experience.

I have never believed in restricting myself to 'a' particular medium to convey an idea or message. So am still working at finding that perfect symbiosis of my film/radio and photography knowledge, that can be put to an appropriate use in the real-world scenario (read: job prospects).

This one post, let alone this blog, would not be enough for me to post all the pictures I have of the gloriously imposing hills. Alas my words too fail to help me describe the virgin beauty of the Nilgiris. Hence I'm going to let my pictures do the talking, bow to thee and say Amen.







(view from tea factory)













(My college from bird's eye view)



(Months of january and february are truly mystic)



(Right outside my campus, they were under my scrutiny)













(Skies are blue and clouds are like cotton-candy just like I've read in fairy tales)


~s~

PS: I'd appreciate your opinion / criticisms / bashings against my posts and pictures

Energy - the elixir of my life

In yet another attempts to resurrect my blog, here I am, reassuring myself over and over again, the necessity of nourishing this blog. Am hoping to recap all thats happened in this 1 yr...my travels...my photography (yes I took up a one year photography course in Light & Life academy)...my thoughts...my cooking expeditions and more..and this time over it is going to be forever.

I know it’s been long since I last posted...and every time I blog-surf I feel guilty! Life has been through quite a striking phase in my life and these six months of my life that I was out of work means a lot to me. Perhaps, the best years of my life. It’s been a grand learning, for myself and of course others around me. It is so strange isn't it, one best thing you do when you have time, a lot of time at that is to dream... to get into that state of trance where everything around you flurry out to indistinctness and all that is static and apparent is you and your thoughts and the best of revelations. It is this feeling (I call it the state of “absoluteness”) that I had missed few months back. The time to daydream, to reflect on yourself, to appreciate certain things, to "undo” certain ways, to muddle through certain moves, to dream of what you want to be and where you want be and why you do all that you do everyday of your life. My life these few months has always hummed a lullaby for me. The sweet lullaby of the immoral life that lies ahead. There have been a lot of things I could do and others that I wanted to do but never did. Let me try and rewind this six months of my life slowly...in a long and lovely way as these months were...

I dedicate this post to my life, my inner calling, the dreamer ME, and of course god to you, from the agnostic ME!

life as they call it...is not so bad after all

I have quit my job. It sure was...is liberating. An overwhelming sense of control over my life, a lil bit of insecurity about my future. What am I doing about it??? NOTHING. Precisely that. Nothing to change my ways. nothing to better times ahead, nothing to change things that are behind me now. Well so I thought. Things that happened in the past, change...not in reality of course but in our perception, in our minds. People I used to hate at work don't seem all that bad after all. Oh c'mon give them a chance, my heart says. The way my office used to smell seems quite inviting! Oh since when have I let my heart speak and to beat it I actually listen to what my heart says. I close my eyes, to feel the chair I used to sit on, sipping diluted coffee I used to fill up my time sheet and check my mail before my work engulfs me. The taxi rides and the no of books I have read on those rides to client meetings, the unending calls from my suppliers for money. I liked the irony of the situation, wealthy producers asking ME for money..hehehe...what a world....

....as I open my eyes I realised I have started thinking again...something I have never done in a long time. Feels good. Feels warm and nice...my bed and pillow and of course the aroma of hot filter coffee. Good day. Good day to all of you out there!!!

corbetto

At 7 45 pm, the infamous Western Express Highway showed no enthusiasm in getting us (me and Kishore) to the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminal (forget getting their on time!). The copious one-ways (a small rusted board indicating that it is a one-way has anyway been used as a barricade), the would-be flyovers (hopeful to shine above all of us for quite a few years now), the policemen on the road, true to MTV's style (Dharthi ka laal campaign) chew up pan and color the road red, sometimes makes you wonder if that’s the only reason why Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation has employed them, edgy fellow drivers who refuse to consider that it is impossible to let a car into a space which is less than 1 ft width, and of course the never-ending phone calls that our taxi driver was receiving seemed more like God's way of saying "How dare you think of having a vacation…!!!"...yeah sure, I didn't need a God to tell me that, it was already 20:50! So much for the countdown that I was religiously following for a month, it was definitely not to go through a moment like that@@@ If not for anything, I needed this desperate break from work…from deadlines and revisions, I just wanted to check what was the big hullabaloo about in my Geography text back when I was in Class VI, listing some 500 odd species of birds...some 200 tigers...1200 sq km of area... which I never managed to remember or show some interest in…now now... getting back to where I was stuck...it was 8 55 pm and we were still outside Mumbai airport, after a lot of struggle (between me, ki and taxi driver). After a lot of arguments (between the taxi driver and some son of a bitch who decided to unload his 100 ton weighing cargo in the middle of the road) after a lot of fight (of course between kishore and Taxi driver...kishore walked out of the taxi…while I was enjoying all of this!) The taxi driver started inching his way ahead. It seemed like an eternal wait… Took our flight at 9 10 pm and we made it to Delhi!!!

Flight journey was...well...ahem...safe...that's the only word that comes to my mind when I think of my journey with Spice Jet (my suspicion started when the pilot announced) "If anyone is found using their mobiles in flight, the flight will return back to the security gate and the concerned person will be arrested. Hope you have a nice journey with Spice Jet"...imagine this in a rusty, drunken voice...it sure gave me the creeps.

So we reach Delhi safe and sound.

There were three possible ways of reaching Corbett National Park, Ram nagar.

a) By train: Train leaves at around 10 30 pm, we reached Delhi at 11.10 pm, so obviously not an option!

b) By bus: The last bus to leave Delhi to Ram Nagar is at 8 pm, will have to wait for an entire day if I want to take it...obviously didn't have all the time in the world, so of course it was never an option.

c) By road: Out of 100 people we asked, 99 of them told its unsafe (dacoits, "terror-prone area"(now, which area isn’t?), risky at nights, not-worth-the-risk)...too bad I decided to get adventurous and take the road, my husband called it "bad planning" and slept through the journey.

Bantoo, our driver was one hell of a guy...knew all the right places to stop and was an excellent driver. At 1.10 am we stopped at road-side dhabha called "saarang". The chill breeze was the kinda appetizer I wanted... rushed inside the dhabha, which is actually on the road, but it has a roof! Had a piping hot chai. Followed by which I had one of the most delicious dinner after a very long time. Alu Parathas with a wedge of "amul" butter... Dhal Makhani with butter floating on top, raw onions (wonder if it was buttered?!)... Paneer burjee and of course Vegetable Kadai (yeah baby…buttered all the way till last helping)...I was so happy that I decided to postpone my diet plan by a week. I could eat guiltlessly...rotis came one after another..., we had to reach Ramnagar by 8.00 for us to get inside the park (ah…well zoo…ah...wild life place, whatever it was) on time. and that’s the only reason why I stopped eating.

The journey to Corbett was truly magical...the roads were long and winding... thick fog playing its way with Bantoo (remember my sweetie driver!)...forests got deeper and denser as we drover further...unable to see anything that was less than 10 mtrs ahead of us...it was more like playing a video game...you never know where the road curves and turns until you actually get there...the only source of light for this long road stretching till Ramnagar was our car's headlight. Lazily, the sun rose along our side to give us some company at around 7 am. To watch the sun rise as we were zipping across the country side was a visual delight. It surely was one of the most beautiful drives of my life. So far so good.

We reached our hotel "Wild club" adventure...true to its name, the place is set in the middle of lush green farm, small huts with make believe beds was where we were going to stay for the next two days in Ramnagar. The cottage was a self sufficient place. Water comes from the river flowing below us, vegetables from the farm behind us, were an entirely family of cow was grazing happily. An equally wild chef lived right there. Oh…the chef….,mmmmm

Couldn't wait any longer to plunge into the forests ...Corbett National Park, there we go. The bus that took us around the place was a very cute one...to go in a bus like that was by itself great fun. It was supposed to be a whole day safari....as the bus set off...the cool breeze kissed our face once in a while, reminding us to make a conscious effort to unwind and let go off everything back in aamchi Mumbai...

an hour into the journey we didn’t spot a single animal...

I thoroughly enjoyed the silence...the wholeness it creates and the emptiness that it recreates in me...the silence that urged me to do something about everything around me...the silence that I never knew of could contain so much meaning...silence like I have never heard of...hmm….I was lovin it!

Around 2 in the afternoon...we had spotted a couple of deers...monkeys…trees here and there...may be a peacock…

I could see us getting restless…disappointment that was suppressed. Blame it on national geographic and animal planet.. when I headed to the forest I was geared up for some hard core....errr....action!

Wild thoughts chasing my mind, maybe a tiger chasing a deer...maybe elephants bathing and tigers pouncing for its attack.,...or ..or...maybe a group of deer’s hopping its way to defense...from the clutches of tigers...never got anything of that sort.... or at least a couple of bees or lizards mating… something WILD! I was waiting patiently...for that defining moment...a picture perfect snap that I can show-off to people at work (well... we never carried a camera with us J heheh) . Nothing worked…we got bored. And what’s the best thing to do while bored…EAT!!!

We head for lunch in the middle of the forest...a place where. other than the group of ppl who came with us in the bus...a lot of monkeys gave us company...as we went to attend nature's call, we saw this bloody monkey (read male) aggressively protecting its counterpart (read humping) every time any of us got near it) and this happened as long as ppl were near that area. So the monkeys humped their way to glory! I thought of this to be a good sign...rather god’s way of saying...baby there is more in store for ya!!! Oh n I sure know intuitions come right!!! So we head for the rest of our journey with a lot of optimism and of course eagerness!!! After a full three course meal (wait a min more than that)....a long drive to nowhere (at least we didn’t know where) ... thick green land...deer’s hopping...birds perching...fresh air (now I know what pollution is!!!)...no sidey ring tone noises...it was bliss....I wake up to realize WE DIDNT SEE any tigers...but that’s Okie...that was the best nap I have ever had in my life!!It was so "Nice"...yes I was a lil disappointed that I didn’t see any tigers in a tiger reserve. but what the hell there is no democracy left in democratic India either...so it' fine! so we head back to our resort after that lovely long safari!!! The only reason why all of us happily got back to our cottages was food. The chef had these magical fingers which churned out delicacies after delicaies...he must have thought we were some kind of wild boars deprived of food for our lifetimes...

We had a 10 30 train to catch....chilly dark night...kurkure...and a cozy night's sleep was sure something I looked forward to. Especially travel within India, I feel is best experienced while going by trains. It’s an amazing experience by itself...the kind of energy the chai waalahs and wada walaahs exuberate is something else! Our train journey was quite exciting...with Kishore and Darshini doing some mind numbing math...not that we would have cribbed to chip a few extra silvers...nevertheless they took up that mind nerving exercise...we reached Delhi much earlier than the scheduled time.

Our next train to Mumbai was at 7.00. We bid each other goodbye after a nice cup of chai and promised to meet again at the Gir forest. having 3 more hours in our hand ...Kishore and I lost complete control over our bowels...and started our “clean toilet” hunting in Delhi...ended up in a "not so" clean one/....and decided to have breakfast right after that...some simple Bread and butter...and we were off to our station. Right from the beginning kishore was extremely averse towards the idea of traveling in a II class... I thought it would make traveling a lot lot better...people to chat with...the typical railway scenario. Reality came crashing on my face...It was horrible...sticky. Stinky...noisy.... lousy!!! :-( It was sad...nevertheless....reached Mumbai well and safe. It felt good.

It has been three months since I have been writing this post...not that I have put in as much thoughts or ideas or my prolific writing skills in it...have been busy and equally lazy to complete this task. By the way the Gir forest mission hasn;'t happened so far. Murali and Bhavani...have already moved on to UK for their studies...me and kishore very much in mumbai... Darshini & Saurabh: Very much in Hyderabad, although globe trotting! Mandar has got married recently@!!! Scott and Greg must have gotten back to the US!!! Anyway...managed to finish it atleast today :-)