Tag: landscape

Mountains, Nature

Shrines in the high mountains…

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 …

Nature

On elephant, unexpressed…

Elephant in Corbett National Park, India

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 …

Mountains, Nature

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, Nature

A Riverine Rote – Trekking in Sainj Valley

Trek to Raktisar, source of Sainj River, Great Himalayan National Park, Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India

Uncategorized

on flowers and mountains…

Flowers of high-altitude Himalaya

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 …

Mountains, Nature

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 …

Mountains, Nature

on pine…

‘tis the season when pine burns, and we lament the colonial lumberjacks whose commercial legacies reverberate through the plumes of smoke afore the horizon, the natural transcends into the political and the tree is duly vilified… its canopy an invitation for the sun and cigarette butts to raise an inferno, its dry, acidic leaves a …

Mountains, Nature

on gluttonous meadows…

Meadows of Devi ki Marhi in upper reaches of Kalihani River valley, Himachal Pradesh, India

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 …

Mountains

on mountains and seclusion…

Cloudy sunset from mountains near Asurbag Top, Great Himalayan National Park, Himachal Pradesh, India

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 …

Mountains

on undefined yearns…

Moraine filled mountains near Pangarchulla (~4,400 mts), Uttarakhand, India

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 …