Tag: scenery

Mountains

Meadows in an afternoon ire

Meadows at Dayara Bugyal, Uttarakhand, India

Meadows for the most part are a release, either from the claustrophobia of canopies, or the tiring, involuntary ballets of moraines and glaciers… colourful tapestries that seem as close to utopia as one can get, expanses and imaginations unbridled, hope taking wings to the horizon… ‘tis where the waters frolic, exulting over their escape from …

Mountains

Meditating over mountains…

Meadows in Kashmir, India

Meditating over mountains is an exercise in peeling off multitudes… meandering around their geometries, mulling over whether to engage with the elements or take shelter from them, you look for those deep life lessons recorded over many a tome of the yore and now chopped up into bite sized, social media portions, but in vain… …

Mountains

Come September…

Bhyundar Khal Trek, September 2022

September – a time of astronomical transitions and a last chance to take a long sojourn in the high mountains… for winters, save some initial sighs on never ending carpets of snow, make up for rather dull trudges… with the monsoons retreating – albeit with lesser and lesser predictability in the Anthropocene – one can …

Nature

Waterfalls, wallowing…

Waterfalls are a contrast, in terms of motion… while the rest of the inanimate prefer to either remain in stasis or relent to move with extreme reluctance, waterfalls are in a screaming rush, as if the oceans would dry out if not for their contribution… gravity and geology… water wanting to become fire… rocks weathering …

Mountains

Where ice turns to water…

Nichnai glacier covered in ice, Kashmir, India

There’s a distinctive dynamic to these places, where ice turns to water up in the high mountains… as if the elements take a deep breath and all is still, a burble here and there, an avalanche or a rockfall in the distance… the elements go about their business in an eerie silence, and every small …

Mountains, Nature

on residues of mountain rains…

Himalayan Coral Berry (Ardisia macrocarpa), Ranikhet, Uttrakhand, India

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 …

Mountains

on long walks in mountains…

walks in Indian Himalaya

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 …