All Things Considered

to experience the towns of Karnataka from the confines of an opulent railway coach ;-)

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[Earlier post from the the trip here] 
From foggy Wayanad we descend down to Calicut - the change in weather indicating the change in altitude quite perceptibly. By the time we arrive at Calicut, the sun is quite high in the sky. Indicates smouldering sand at the beach. Shade of a hotel room is a wiser option. Usually afternoons and […]

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The sun is fading away, that is the end of the day.
No brownie points for guessing what I’ve been listening to (too much), lately :-p
[Atop Hemakuta hill, Hampi]

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Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees, and marmalade skies..
- Lennon/McCartney
Stop. Picture that first ;)

[Shot at Parassini, Kerala]
This is probably such a cliche of a shot, but invokes memories of that silent evening sunset along the river, followed by an almost-full-moon night. The river scene is quite nice when the moonlight falls […]

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Kerala - It was meant to be, this weekend. Was sitting aroud until 9:00PM on Friday evening , with a very good idea of how the how the longish Chritsmas break was going to be and then out of freaking-nowhere materializes a trip that takes us through Western Ghats, to the seaside at Kerala and […]

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A friend and I had been on a recent trip to Mangalore, Udupi/Malpe and we thought it was great fun! Until we recounted  that weekend a coupla days back during another trip ..

Here, a summary of events:
- Stuck in a horrible traffic jam near the Majestic Bus stand. We walked the last kilometer to the bus stand in all […]

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If you’ve been on an amazing trip, but yet lazy enough to write a trip report, what do you do ? You merely post a picture and tell yourself that you’ll come back and edit the post later with the trip account :D

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Martinete (considered one of the oldest styles in Flamenco) is such a big hit with me for the simple reason that it does not have any guitar accompaniment. The lack of an accompaniment exemplifies the sound made on the dance floor , reverberating and producing a dramatic sound effect in all the silence! I fell for it first […]

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Like the age-defying stone carvings in the temples at Belur and Halebid, the Keshava temple at Somnathpur too stands testimony  to the exquisite stone work that flourished during the Hoysala times.
The Somnathpur temple (Side view)

What holds the temple up

 Intricate carvings

So there - The difference between specialization and super-specialization !

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You can plan and plan a weekend and, yet end up doing something totally different. What was originally meant to be a weekend in town to catch up on pending thoughts & things and a visit to Select turned into a trip outta town. Idle Friday nights, itchy feet, a friend ready to jump onto any […]

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[Shot on the train to Mysore - A trip made for visit the temple at Somnathpur ]
ISO 1600, very little light - Hence, as you can tell, too much noise in the image. But then, don’t children and noise always go together ? :-p (Pictures shot in a train)

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My favorite spot in the Meenakshi Amman Temple, Madurai is the Pottramarai Kulam (Pottramarai : Golden Lotus; Kulam: Pond) and the long corridors that surround it. The walls and ceiling of these corridors have painted murals and historical info about the temple on them. 
With the temple authorities maintaining the pond water (and temple in general) clean lately, it […]

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We charmed the guard at Malpe port Sunday evening into let us through the already-closing gates of the port and hurried to the jetty to see the evening sun before those ominous clouds engulfed it. Saw the evening sun in all it’s glory amidst all the activity at the port. After about half an hour , just after the […]

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Of all the foolishness & deceit that goes on in this world, this ‘cognitive’ fraud called weather forecast is probably the biggest. The ‘forecast’ seems to be more or less the same as how the weather was today. And naturally, exactly the opposite of how that ‘tomorrow’ pans out.

A friend calls from Switzerland to tell me […]

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Is Orissa South India or North India ? Well, Lonely Planet seemed to think it was not part of South India in 1998 edition. So, I turned over to LP North India 2005 edition on the shelf to look up some travel info, only to realize that Orissa was moved to South India sometime between 1998-2005 ! :)
Anyway, the newer […]

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