Waiting to land!

via Photo Challenge: Waiting

This picture was taken from the flight while landing at the JFK Airport in New York. The aircraft was waiting for sometime for the fog to clear up (as seen in this picture here) before landing.

Intricate window structure

via Photo Challenge: Structure

The intricate window structure at the Udaipur Palace, Rajasthan, India

This picture shows a window in the famous palace at Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan in India. Intricate patterns on windows are a common feature in palatial heritage buildings in Rajasthan. This one happened to be even more interesting – with several different structural patterns in different sections of one big window overlooking the big city.

Wanderlust : Discovering the unexpected

via Photo Challenge: Wanderlust

A late entry for this weeks challenge. But nevertheless, happy to post.

Wanderlust for me includes a flavor of surprises and unexpected discoveries while exploring new places.

For this weeks photo challenge, I will take you all to one such unexpected forest that my better half and I ended up visiting during our trip to Goa. The state of Goa in India is almost synonymous with a lovely coastline and youthful beaches full of activities. We were travelling from north to south Goa and did not know that the route that we took passed through a dense, beautiful green forest. It was a wonderful surprise to explore dense vegetation of trees and canopies along the road; much in contrast to the otherwise rows of coconut trees seen in the rest of Goa!

Even now, when I tell people about having explored a forest in the otherwise beach-centric Goa, people are so surprised!!

Earth depictions – The Indian Himalayas

via Photo Challenge: Earth

Whenever anyone talks about the grandeur of the Earth, there is only one thing that comes to my mind, and that is the majestic grace of the Indian Himalayas.

Happy Earth Day to you all!!

Here are two pictures from my recent visit to the Himalayas

The Kumaon Himalayas, Uttarakhand, India

 

Twilight is my favourite time in the Himalayas. As the sun bids you farewell for the day, it colours the mountains in a different shade. So peaceful, so retrospective. 

A surprise hidden in the water

Surprise

I took this picture five years ago, on a holiday to the beautiful Maldives islands. I was trying to capture the ripples on the water and the corals beneath, when I spotted this little fish through my camera lens. The camouflage was brilliant, and soon enough I became more interested in the fish than the corals or ripples!

The security of simplicity

via Photo Challenge: Security

The word security makes me think of a state of mental calmness and absence of the fear of losing in a race. Kind of like the ‘inner peace’ state. Inner security you could say.

One element in human nature that imparts this kind of a security is simplicity. Simplicity of lifestyle and of thoughts frees a person from complicated insecurities arising out of a rushed, complex, racing desire to constantly be after something in life. I have often noticed the greatest inner security in people with the simplest of lives.

This picture here is a representation of one such place where I saw tremendous mental security and content in the people of this village. This village is called Mana, a small village set in the Garhwal Himalayas of the state of Uttarakhand in India. We visited this place on a Sunday where we saw this scene near a school. The photograph is not great since I took it with a simple phone camera, but hopefully will convey the general theme.

Notice the little children participating in a race while parents look on with appreciation. The women were seen to sit in a row and knit sweaters, caps etc for the upcoming winter. This knitting is the chief source of livelihood for the women in the village, while the men engage in farming. That pretty much sums up the lifestyle in this village. The people here were so happy, so content, so secure in their little world. Simplicity and in turn security in true sense.

Dense – Weekly Photo Challenge

via Photo Challenge: Dense

This photograph was taken in a street market at Hyderabad, India. The local chudi-bazaar (market for bangles) has densely packed bangles up for sale. The dense packing adds to the glitter of the jewelry, often attracting people from a distance.