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If you are from India, you know that the monsoons are the lifeline of the country. It brings joy and celebration to the land, the people and most of all the wildlife. Over ten meters of rain falls in the Western Ghats in this season transforming the land completely [...]
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I have always wanted to photograph hornbills with the rainforest canopy in which they live in. I am in general a fan of animal in its habitat kinda photography and yesterday I was lucky enough to photograph this in Anamalais tiger reserve.
Finally moved out of LJ for good to a wordpress install on my site. I resisted for few years, but finally it was about time. When I started using LJ back in 2002, LJ was my social network, my rssaggregator, my friends page, and my twitter andfacebook. Most of all, it was run by an amazing team who really cared about LJ.
But things have changed now. LJ gives a damn about its users. All my social network happens on twitter+orkut+facebook and all my LJ friends are already there.. My rssaggregatoris Bloglines and LJ does not have any meaning for me now.
So kindly update your RSS feeds guys as my new blog is here : http://kalyanvarma.net/journal
Anush and Gowtham helped me move the posts and customize the WP theme. Thanks a ton guys. The new blog still has some rough edges, but will fix all them soon and I will cross-post for few weeks till I move fully.
I'm going off on my annual summer holiday starting this weekend. Last year it was the fabulous south west and this year it is going to be the North West. Most of the roads I intend to take are still under snow even with global warming and all. Route changes depending on ever-changing conditions are something that I'm used to and even my usual rough trip plan needs to get a bit rougher.
A multi-week trip means packing in a lot of clothes. Here's how I do it: Go to the closet and pick all things green and brown I see and dump it into the bag! It works. Now that I'm done with the clothing department, I need to get to the more important things like checking my camping gear, the sleeping bag, torches, headlamps, backpacks, books and cameras.
At Vengurla Bunder, there were a few people line fishing. I was curious and went closer to find this pretty fish which was about to die and maybe become someone's lunch. I have ambivalent thoughts about eating fish- I love seafood and find it hard to give up. Over the years, I have read much about the terrible impact of overfishing and the fish species which are now under threat- not to mention the birds and other creatures that are affected by large scale fishing. It makes me feel uncomfortable when I eat fish, thinking about whether it would've been caught ethically or not- (please, no vegetarian vs non-vegetarian rants on this post). 
These kind of choices are also important when you visit a place as a tourist. How many resources are you going to use up? How much respect do you have for the environment there & how much pressure are you putting on it? At a practical level, one person's choices may become irrelevant, but at an ethical level it does matter to me.
Yay! One of my favorite movies, The Jungle Book, featuring Sabu is available on youtube movies (and in High Definition):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Zfz7elIt0
Awesome.
I did a short and hurried trip to Point Reyes this afternoon. The high tide came in early and I missed out on the tide pool shootout. And then I almost ran out of gasoline searching for a place to refuel. Couldn't have gotten worse right? It did. Near the light house, I saw a feral cat by the roadside with a kill. I first thought that the cat had gotten itself a ground squirrel, but it was later identified as a young Long-tailed Weasel! I saw an adult weasel later in the day, but it quickly ran away before I could pull over and take a shot.
Every once in a while you come across something unexpected on the trails. Dark clouds loomed in the east, and the Sierra in the west was behind a veil of fog and rain. Mono Lake was not blue, or green or turquoise like it is on an ordinary day. There was an ominous calm. The storm had arrived.
The day before I was supposed to fly to San Diego I heard that my dear old friend, Spike, had died back in Bangalore. I knew him since he was just a little, fragile, helpless pup, and I can never get over the fact that he won't be there to greet me when I make that visit home. This post is dedicated to his memory.
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Captive animals and performing animals are not the kind of animals I'd like to see. I'd rather see them in the wild, when they are free and own their worlds. Once in a while a visit to a zoo comes up. I've been to zoos only a handful of times in the last decade and each time I've come away with mixed feelings. The answer to the question "Whether animals should be trained to perform or be held captive?" remains as hazy as ever. Zoos and performing animals are probably important for the people to look and take interest in the wonderful lifeforms that share this space with us...
Last spring we met at their home in the mountains, and it's hard for me to believe that I was supposed to meet him a few weeks ago but now will never be able to meet him again. RTM, you will be missed. This post is dedicated to his memory.
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I was in Yosemite during the weekend. This was the first time in several trips that I missed out on meeting a Coyote, but we did get to see other interesting critters in the mammal department - a bear, lots of marmots, lots of deer, squirrels and an awesome pika! The bird department had their usual suspects in attendance but the quails and grouse were absconding. With the skies constantly switching between blue, white and gray it was as beautiful as the place can get. Yosemite during thunderstorms is just spectacular.
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Last updated: July 04, 2009 12:00 AM
