Photo essay on high-altitude wetlands
Tag: camping
On solstice sculptures…
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… …
Mountains and the canvasses of insignificance…
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 …
A Riverine Rote – Trekking in Sainj Valley
Trek to Raktisar, source of Sainj River, Great Himalayan National Park, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India
on mules…
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 …
On blues of the blue sheep…
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 – …
on gluttonous meadows…
come the cusp of rains receding into autumn, those mountain meadows are a sight to behold… while the rest of the senses are trying to figure out the nitty-gritty of navigating through the chaos beneath that seemingly innocent carpet of green… the outdoors from a macro perspective prefer dressing up conservatively for most part of …
on mountains and seclusion…
mountains make their own weather, goes the old adage… what it forgets to mention is that they keep it too… only letting the last vestiges of moisture tumble downstream… in a fiefdom determined by relief, the environs are pristine and breathtaking… yet they exact a price, these pinnacles, for bestowing one with the true liberation …
on undefined yearns…
the sense of expansiveness brings about a longing… a desire to partake in all but not knowing what in… one yearns for a past built upon the corrected plinths of the present… the mountain becomes more a curtain than a barrier, never refusing a passage but strongly suggestive of moving on… the elements become a …
on the benevolent bumblebee…
a bumblebee doesn’t bite, hence ‘tis affable… the logic is simple and infallible… for what looks rather pompous with bulging bodies swaying twitchily on wings of underwhelming proportions turns out to be a rather humble and sincere disposition after all… the bee not only defies its physiology and the physics associated with it, but displays …