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 …
Photo essay on high-altitude wetlands
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 …
The farmer belongs to the romanticized sect of imagination, weaving his craft across the terra firma in symphonies attached firmly to the cycles of the sun, from days to seasons to generations… a lilting lore of never-ending toil, pain and suffering, of mute courage and resolve that seeks benediction from the land… agriculture is perhaps …
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… …