Tag: landscape

Mountains

the man in mist…

afternoon mist at the base of Thamsar Pass, Bada Bhangal Trek, Himachal Pradesh, India

A feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow it starts with a feeling of vacuum, this vicissitude, as the valleys fill up with mist… the vapour dances on the grass and bounces off the rocks as a …

Mountains

the woods o’ winter…

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again’. -Lewis Carroll the woods of winter are an exercise in a patient build …

Mountains

on befuddled trudges…

Trek to Rakhundi top, Great Himalayan National Park, Himachal Pradesh, India

the pull of snow is a bemusing affair to say the least… while ‘tis a charmingly uniform perspective on a canvas that is generally a palette of myriad contrasts, looks tend to be deceiving when it comes to the actual traverse… not surprising considering that ‘tis a progeny of the winter where the sun shines brighter …

Nature

on twilight jumbos…

They say an elephant never forgets. What they don’t tell you is, you never forget an elephant. – Bill Murray The pachyderm, as a whole, seem rather content in a general sort of aloofness to mortality… that there are very few predatory threats definitely plays a part… there’s no pricking up of the ears or …

Nature

on unnerving gorges

Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards. -David Livingstone …

Nature

on leaping reticulations…

History, like beauty, depends largely on the beholder, so when you read that, for example, David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls, you might be forgiven for thinking that there was nobody around the Falls until Livingstone arrived on the scene. -Desmond Tutu      The fading light is like a steam iron, smoothing over the corrugations …

Mountains, Nature

On mist reveries…

Landscapes with mist, Bada Bhangal Trek, Dhauladhar Himalayas, Himachal Pradesh, India

Romanticism is one of those luxuries that evolution seems to have bestowed upon us once the issues of subsistence and food chain were dealt with… ask it to pump up the adrenalin for a daredevilry, or cough up some dopamine for a ruminating poem, and seldom shall it fail to oblige… the philosophy of spiritual …

Mountains

The man on the top…

Saketi Top, Great Himalayan National Park, Himachal Pradesh, India

Spotting a wisp of romanticism, or the divine, in the cold gust of a glacial wind takes a sarcastic imbecile, or the blessed benign… the rest have the customary defence of mumbling cuss words through the parched parchment of a throat… despite the kaleidoscopic nature of human dispositions, the elements — when in an insistent …

Mountains, Nature

on druggets…

Meadows of Bhadpal, Dhauladhar Himalaya, Himachal Pradesh

…How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? Because the lovely little flower is free Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold… –William Wordsworth, A Poet! He Hath Put his Heart to School Meadows are perhaps the most common pre-conceived imagery of a beautiful landscape… the gently rollicking undulations of grass inspire ballads on …

Mountains

a swansong of the sun…

A riot of colours at Dunagiri Peak, Uttarakhand…

The sky ambles blue, broods black and bleeds white… look at any high mountain panorama and you’d see the analogy ticking away incessantly through dawn and dusk, that play of shadows and light, of heat and cold, of hope and despair, the quintessential play of yin and yang if one were to ponder, or suffer, …