soliloquies of a footloose
‘twas perchance that we got to know of Chenap valley, which we did as our original plans went awry at the last moment… tucked in ‘twixt religious fervours, highways and hydropower more hedonistic that utilitarian, and the never-ending scrapes of JCB for last-mile connectivity, ‘tis purported to be a quieter alternative to Valley of Flowers, …
Musings on clouds in meadows, treks across Western Himalaya…
Isolation in mountains, unlike those of confined spaces that breeds restlessness, is steeped in contentment… musings on mountains and solitude…
cairns are, in a way, a coarse representation of the tumult between the linear and non-linear perspectives to life… the former measuring existence set paths adhering to predictable, quantified templates, the latter proposing diverse, meandering paths to arrive at the same destinations… mountains as a metaphor are quite apt, for their traverses are an exercise …
Photo essay on high-altitude wetlands
Winter solstice – the longest night – one end of the seesaw from whose embers daylight begins to claw back… it is dreamy, surreal time in the mountains, when contrasts of autumn are overtaken by misty monochromes of cold… for darkness is a time of reminiscence, and as the solstice approaches it gains in strength… …
The rote on our cosmic insignificance is a couple of millennia old… religious discourses use it as a tool to ensure social order, for the philosopher ‘tis the bedrock of existential thought… the myriad lord almighty are an attempt to ascribe a finiteness to this infinite… it is a thought that is more overwhelming than …
Trek to Raktisar, source of Sainj River, Great Himalayan National Park, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India
One should stick to trails that aren’t suitable for mules, if a higher degree of isolation is what one seeks in the mountains… for where the beasts of burden can trudge, humanity eventually finds a way to carve out an abode, be it villages dotting valley floors or transhumance in the higher climes… while in …
Quite literally, the blue sheep lives on the edge… marvel many a folk at the sheer nonchalance of the caprid in the face of vertical walls… yet ‘tis a rather ironic quest for safety, for even the most exceptional climbing skills or large herd numbers fail to get them out of that twitchy demeanour – …