soliloquies of a footloose
monsoons bring their own unique romance to the mountains, neither comparable to the pure white vistas of winter nor quite like the salubriousness of spring or autumn… the summers preceding them are not really scorching but still do tend to get on one’s nerves that the rains pacify, beginning with the petrichor and then moving …
there are walks in the mountains while hiking that one underestimates, naïve enough not to pay heed to the illusions of a simple way up wild gorges… the day elongates proportionally with the trail, disaggregated into phases that seem like days unto themselves, each phase anchored to its own particular memory… there’s a brief period …
Musings on clouds in meadows, treks across Western Himalaya…
desert … arid, dryness… dehydration, oasis… the sands are, for obvious reasons, representative of desolation, dreariness and despondence… a rite of passage beyond which lie many a virtue – justice, fame, wealth, enlightenment… the ramblings on enjoying the journey rather than the destination doesn’t really ring true in these landscapes though… in the …
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 …
Temples, unlike shrines, carry the baggage of civilizations – through the elaborate nature of their façade, the document evolution of subsistence and beliefs, the balances of power and associated antics… with shrines, especially those in the high mountains, one observes a relatively restricted role… as a placemark, they signify vantage points, as conservators they are …
Pachyderms, especially the elephant, much closer to humans that any other of their brethren, are a placid kind, a tad too much for their own good it seems at times, trudging countless miles without the frills and tantrums of well-provisioned wayfarers, if one were to think of a living analogy for taking it in one’s …
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… …
Trek to Raktisar, source of Sainj River, Great Himalayan National Park, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India
flowers spell beauty, maybe because they are a sign of success, (a colourful) proof of a plant having not only survived, but getting ready to spread the seeds out for the next generation to sprout, a rainy interlude in the symphony of seasons, the sum total of all the rigour happening underground expressed as a …