Off beaten track

�We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.�  ?  Ursula K. Le Guin ,  The Wind's Twelve Quarters Alas, it is difficult to get lost in a forest in India, there are few unexplored forests left and it is difficult to be alone. However the Satpura Tiger Reserve is one such forest where the crowds are less and the resorts are sensibly made to merge into ambient nature. Our welcome by a leopard by the side of the road as we drove in at night was a wonderful precursor of the two days ahead.  The haughty animal, disdainfully looked at us and slowly walked away into the jungle.  Here is where we let go of  our  daily electronic cocoons and freed ourselves to the joys of  simply being at one with nature. The bridge and a hut at Reni Pani Resort... ...is a perfect example of being one with nature. Local material is used on the outside  to give a natural ambience to the...

"life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, It's learning to dance in the rain."  Amboli is a deluge in June, (it rains an average of seven metres per year) and coupled with lush forests, it is the ideal environment for a host of insects, amphibians and snakes. All celebrating the monsoon in their own way, quite literally singing, dancing, mating and eating in the rain. About an hour from Sawantwadi station on the Goa/Maharashtra border, probably the resort is protected by its inaccessibility as one can only get up by road.  Room with a view We stayed at Mrugaya, a small but very comfortable homestay run by Parag Rangnekar.  It has three rooms, very neat and clean, with a large verandah and sit out. The Parag is also a very talented nature guide with prodigious knowledge of the local flora, fauna and trails.  His patience and pleasant demeanour add to the experience. Eat at the many restaurants in the town, if you are non-veg the fish thali is particularly delec...

Mumbai, a city that actually never sleeps. It is constantly humming with the hectic economic activity that goes on almost without let up, everyone is earning a living. Every inch of the pavement is a market, suburban trains, big shops and small shops, houses in tiny lanes, people working all day and then again all night; all this and more constitute the hive that is Mumbai. Despite the swirling activity, people are kind, considerate and allowing,  they have time for you. In this maelstrom, there are tiny eddies of calm and solitude and privacy. in a three night photography workshop I gained a tiny peep into a small part of the hard lives of these lovely people.    The Beatles immortalise this in their eponymous song which says it all. "It's been a hard day's night, and I'd been working like a dog It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log" Lady Selling Fish Mumbai is a city of commerce, big business houses and street retail, all busily h...

The Spectacular beauty of the mountains Every muscle is straining after six hours of ascent, at 3700 metres my oxygen deprived lungs are gasping, adjusting the seemingly heavy load on my aching back (where did all that extra weight come from?), in a final burst of energy I climb the final slope and in a sudden breath-taking moment a spectacular panorama unfolds, verdant mountains, veiled in clouds surround an icy lake with flowers in profusion.  Suddenly months of preparation and the cost of the trip become worth it. After I have absorbed the beauty of what I see, I reach for my camera to record for posterity what the eye and mind sees. This is exactly what I experienced when I trekked to the Valley of Flowers in Northern India earlier this year.  See  my earlier blog on the Valley of Flowers on this site and my site on Flickr for photographs for this slice of Gods own corner. Links below:  http://xerxespa.blogspot.in/2015/08/valley-of-flowers-and-hemkund-trek-to_30....

There is nothing better than to dive with a group of accomplished divers. A dive group consisting of Divemasters and Instructors displaying perfect buoyancy during an ascent from a deep dive to 36 meters on the Gorgonian Gardens off Colombo.

The propeller of the tug boat wreck fondly known as the Trug. Home of curious Lionfish and a superb swim through filled with glass fish.

Two divers explore the Taprobane East Wreck, one of our favourite wrecks on the outer reefs of Colombo. This day was a bit murkier than usual with about 15 meters of visibility instead of the usual 20-30m. Read more here .

A curious crab peers out from a crevasse on Degalmeda reef. You can often see these crabs skittering away into the shadows as you approach so getting a good sighting of one is difficult!

Since I don't have much time to blog regularly these days, I've decided to do a small showcase of my underwater photography. Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a good start to the year! A shy Blenny on a reef in Colombo (probably a colour morph of a bi-colour blenny) Equipment used: Sea & Sea DX-2G

As a word of explanation, I once spent two months living in a little village in Maragalakanda, close to Moneragala back in 2004. My purpose, living there without electricity or running water, was to study bird diversity in an agroforestry scheme for my MSc. This was when the photography bug first bit so there are some tales worth telling and some photos worth showing, though the latter were for the most part taken with a dinky Canon G3. For more of the Moneragala Chronicles click here . Nuwan jumped off the tree that he had just tied a yellow ribbon to, marking one of our research sites and landed lightly on the rock. He looked at his feet, looked at me initially with no indication that anything was amiss but a split second later his countenance changed. Dare I say he went a bit pale and in rapid succession he did a double take towards his feet and daintily but adroitly stepped aside. Of course not being one to be fazed by anything, especially anything reptilian in...

As a word of explanation, I once spent two months living in a little village in Maragalakanda, close to Moneragala back in 2004. My purpose, living there without electricity or running water, was to study bird diversity in an agroforestry scheme for my MSc. This was when the photography bug first bit so there are some tales worth telling and some photos worth showing, though the latter were for the most part taken with a dinky Canon G3. For more of the Moneragala Chronicles click here . �A perfect picture, where the whole world holds its breath�   That line from the Match by Romesh Gunasekera has been one of my favourite quotes on photography, despite it being not from a real photographer. For me however it holds the line holds a looking-glass quality of an ideal that can never really be achieved in the real world. There is no perfect picture, all pictures have good and bad and there are too many subjects in the world and stories to be told with photography for there t...