First of all, let me offer my apologies for being late in coming up with this second part. Was little busy with work related stuff and travels to my home town. Anyway, here I go.

The timings of the palace illumination were written in a flux board on the way. Normally, the illumination lasts for an hour during weekends (7.00 PM ' 8.00 PM); due to Dussehra it was extended to one more hour (i.e. till 9.00 PM). Once we reached the palace gate, Adarsh asked for the car keys since he forgot to take something. I gave him the keys and he left for the parking lot. Meanwhile, Baburaj and I started clicking the illuminated palace gate.

In 5 minutes, while we were wondering where Adarsh was, my mobile started ringing. Yes, it was Adarsh on the other end. And what he had to tell me was something really scary. The worst nightmare had come true. He accidentally left the car key inside the car and closed the door. Now we have a locked car with the key inside it!

We rushed to the spot and started whacking our IT brains for algorithms and project plans on how to open the car without a key. I wish I had a car that opens the door when I say “Open Sesame”. But it only happened in Arabian Nights. Nevertheless, now we started thinking like thieves. If we could get a metal scale of 30 centimeters or something like that, we could slide it in through the gap in between the glass and door on the driver's side window and hit the lever that locks the door. If we hit the right area, we could open the door. Sethu started asking all the near by shops for a metal scale or something similar to that. The entire search went in vain.

Another driver (a Keralite) also came to help us. He also suggested the same thing; get a metal scale. At last, Adarsh and Baburaj decided to go in search of a shop to buy a metal scale. Time elapsed and minutes felt like hours while Sethu and I waited for their return. We were so restless, that we called Adarsh and Baburaj every now and then. At last, they got what we were looking for and got back at around 8.45 PM.

Everything was pretty fast after that. After several attempts with the scale, we were able to open the door. It was then that I realized how secure any car out there is? It didn't take more than 5 ' 10 mins to open the car. It was already 8.55 PM and we now had only 5 more minutes before the palace illumination came to an end. We took the keys, locked the car and ran towards Mysore Palace to capture the beauty of the lights before it goes off.

Something is better than nothing and I was satisfied with the something that I got from there. I got few stills of the palace although I didn't have much choice of angle to compose proper pictures due to the very limited time frame. Just like the old saying ' Beggars can't be choosers.

I also got a few candid frames of the street sellers who were selling toys near the palace. Anyhow we missed the Dussehra celebrations that were there in front of the palace as it was all over by that time. We have no choice but to wait one more year to capture the same.

We returned to our room after the shoot, and had dinner in between. We started planning the next day's activities. As per our initial plans, we had to go to Gopalswamy Betta, approximately 70 kilometers away from Mysore. It is one of the highest peaks in Bandipur National Park and is definitely worth a visit. But we were all pretty exhausted due to the unexpected events of the day and the walk in the Zoo. We didn't want to waste time in travel again and didn't want to miss out Chamundi Hills. Hence, we dropped Gopalswamy Betta from the plan and decided that we shall move to Chamundi hills early in the morning. Alarms were set and we dozed off to sleep.

The Alarms went off at 6.00 AM on Adarsh's or Baburaj's mobile (don't remember whose mobile now). I don't even remember if the alarms actually rang or not and I bet none of us heard it. Any way, it was me who woke up first, and when I woke up, it was almost 7.30 AM. I woke the others up and we rushed to finish our morning chores to get ready for the expedition. Around 8.15 ' 8.30 AM, we hit the road and started moving towards Chamundi hills.

I think mentioning a few words about Chamundi Hills won't be boring here. As per Hindu mythology, Goddess Chamundeswari killed the demon Mahishasura in a battle on this hill and hence the name “Chamundi Hills”. There is a beautiful temple of Goddess Chamundeswari on the hills. Another attraction is the big statue of Nandi situated a little below the hill. A panoramic view of the Mysore city is visible from the top of the hills. And during dusk, the view of the city is extremely beautiful. If it's a day in which, Mysore palace gets illuminated, it would definitely be a treat for your eyes.

Chamundeswari temple is 13 kilometers from Mysore city and we reached there pretty fast after our breakfast which we had on the way. (We had put the wheels to a halt twice to take pictures in between.) After parking the car in the parking lot, we got into business and our cameras ceased to rest. The street peddlers and shops there gave us enough opportunity to click and Sethu was also more than happy, because we gave him the attention he craved for at constant intervals. He enjoyed the role of being a model in front of three hungry cameras.

After spending some quality time near the Chamundeswari temple, filling the memory cards, we decided to move down. On the way, we went to the big statue of Nandi, took some snaps and proceeded to move to Mysore. We were all little tired and took rest for a while before vacating our room. Around noon, we set the engine back on fire and moved towards Bangalore.

Our search for a place to have lunch ended up in a restaurant of Country Club on the highway. As none of us were members of the club, and since it was already a little late (around 2.00 PM), it took quite some time to get the food served for 4 hungry guys like us? Once it was served, everything vanished within minutes and we continued our journey after paying the bills.

The music of Anoushka Shankar and Ghazals by Hariharan gave me company on our drive back; along with that was Baburaj, who was scratching his head trying to maintain and settle the accounts of the trip and the occasional snores of Adarsh and Sethu which rose from the rear seat.

Please find a picture from the trip below. Hope you will like it.

Mysore Palace - Illuminated

How boring will it be to spend a long weekend alone in Bangalore? My mind was racing like Formula 1 cars thinking of ways to get rid of boredom for the coming long weekend of 19, 20 and 21st of September, 2009 (21st was holiday due to Eid). Very soon my mind found the solution for the problem A two Day Trip!!!… Nothing other than a trip could keep me and my camera away from boredom.

Now other questions popped up. Where and with whom?? The first question was answered quickly and the destination was Mysore. Now the question - with WHOM? started bugging me. Both my roommates are in their home town and are down with Jaundice; that’s one reason why I am home alone. Sreeji is abroad on an onsite assignment. I had very less hope about other friends, bcoz, most of them will be travelling to their hometowns since its the long weekend. I thought of giving it a try and dialed Lijo (Yeah the same guy who was with me on the trip to Nandi Hills) Lijo said that he would have to take a rain check on that since he was going to Kerala and suggested I ask Adarsh, his room mate. Adarsh is also another member of Malayalikoottam Adarsh agreed to join in and I called up another member of Malayalikkoottam ' Baburaj and then the fourth member ' Sethu. Even though Sethu is not a photographer, he decided to join in upon one condition ' That he must be considered the official model and we must take his pictures every now and then.

The date was fixed as 19th September early morning. And we started planning more on the trip. The places to visit were decided in advance and intimated to everyone. My Santro was declared the official chariot for the trip and every one started dreaming about the weekend with restless hearts.

Baburaj reached my flat on Friday night itself after work to avoid delay in the morning. We set the alarm and slept. Alarm was not required to wake us up in the morning and after getting ready, we set the wheels rolling to Madiwala to pick up Adardh by 5.45 AM. After that we moved to Thavarekare, from where Sethu joined the team. Once the quorum was full and Sethu was introduced to the Baburaj and Adarsh. We started our expedition and moved to Nice road via Bannerghatta road. In between we had a stop for fuel. Nice road is as nice as the name indicates and I loved driving on that road. Several kilometers later, after turning to Mysore road, we stopped at Hotel Kamath for our breakfast. The food was lovely, but it took away almost an hour of our time as we had to wait for a long time to get a table. Yeah, such was the queue there. After finishing breakfast, we sped to Srirangapattana, our initial target.

The road was considerably empty and I was able to drive considerably fast. We passed Channapattana - The land of wooden toys; and covered Mandya to reach Srirangapattana.  The only place where we faced little traffic on the way was Mandya. Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary was the first place in our list in Srirangapattana. Ranganathittu is a tiny Bird Sanctuary, 3 kilometers away from Srirangapattana and 19 kilometers from Mysore. Best time to visit the place is between June and December ' during the nesting season of water birds. It had small islands in between the river Cauvery where the birds come and occupy the trees for breeding. The Painted Stork is the bird which is more in number over there in Ranganathittu. We can go boating there and go near the islands to see trees covered with birds. For those who plan to go there in the future, if you go boating, beware of the crocodiles in water! It would be better to shoot Birds in the morning before the sun is out fully; that was the main reason why Ranganathittu bubbled up in the batting order.

We reached there by around 9.00 AM after a 130 Kilometer drive. While getting the pass from the entrance, the guard informed us that there won’t be any boating because the water level is pretty high and the crocodiles are more in number these days. That was the first blow for our dreams to capture birds from close range. We will no more be able to cover the birds from close range. None of us had expensive super tele zoom lenses to cover them from the main land. Amongst us, my 70-300 mm was the biggest telephoto lens available. After parking the car in the parking lot and changing to work mode, we started clicking with Sethu as our model, and started wandering around. The place had a nice ambience and was kept neat and clean. Even though we had nothing to shoot there, we spend some time there taking photos of each other, and roaming around. After some time, we thought of moving to our next destination ' Ranganathaswamy temple, Srirangapattana.

We need to drive little backwards in the Mandya direction  and deviate from the main road to reach the temple. As soon as we parked the car, and got out, the street vendors came rushing to us seeing us as prospective buyers. Disappointing them we went inside the temple and joined the queue to get inside. While in the queue, a lady who was selling pooja materials informed us that photography is prohibited inside. Another blow on the face for 3 guys with cameras hung around their necks and various lenses in their jacket’s pocket. The warning was confirmed once we entered inside; there was a big board intimating that photography is prohibited inside the temple. After praying, we got outside. It was almost 11.30 ' 12 and we excluded Tipu Sultan’s summer palace in Srirangapattana from the list of places to visit and decided to move to Mysore. We already knew that photography was prohibited inside the palace and it won’t be worth an investment of time. If any of you guys plan to go to Mysore in future, you can try going there. We skipped that place just because we cannot carry our cameras inside.

We steered towards Mysore next and all of us were facing one common problem Hunger!!!. Once we reached Mysore, we roamed a little and found a good Kerala restaurant. The meal was nice, and after that we decided to move to Mysore Zoo. It was close to the restaurant in which we had our lunch. After parking the car in the Zoo’s parking lot, we took the entry pass and entered the Zoo. Mysore Zoo spreads across 250 acres and is one of the major attractions of Mysore. It is one of the oldest and popular Zoos in South India. It was inaugurated in 1892, more than a century ago, and is considered as one of the oldest in the world. It houses a wide range of wild animals. We had to walk more than 3 kilometers to cover the entire zoo. We took even more time than normal visitors to move around as our hungry cameras were busy with the feast offered in front of them. Here our official model was disappointed a bit, because he didn’t get much attention from us. We were happy and exhausted after the 3 ' 4 hours we spend inside the Zoo and decided to move to our next location.

As per our initial plan, the next location was Chamundi hills. But if we went to Chamundi hills, we would miss the Mysore Palace illumination which will took place only on weekends and during Dussehra. So we guys rescheduled our plans and decided to find a good place to stay, and then move to Mysore Palace, the palace illumination and cover the Dussehra celebrations which started the same day.

Our search for a place to stay ended at a hotel near the suburban bus stand. Before reaching there, we roamed around a lot in the city searching for a place. After parking our car in the Mysore palace parking lot, we walked through the streets of Mysore enjoying the slight drizzle and sights of Mysore. We took a 4-bed suite and after paying the advance, we returned to where our car was parked. By now, it was almost 7.20 p.m. and the palace was already illuminated. As it was drizzling slightly, Adarsh decided not to carry his camera. I decided to carry mine since I had a transparent plastic cover to protect it from the rain. We locked the car and moved towards the palace gate unaware of the fact that something unexpected is waiting for us.

Here is one picture I captured on the trip. Hope you like it.

Ready to wear Faces

Life is a series of unplanned events… And the more unplanned it is, the more exciting the experience will be… Even if you try to plan a lot, you may end up with something else… Totally different from your plan… So if something happens exactly as per your plan, it’s by sheer luck. This is the way I like to approach life. Jus take it as it comes to me… Rather than me whacking my head to plan it and see all my plans getting broken and feel disappointed. Still it’s not practical to live without any plans @ all… So my plans are mostly like old traditional Japanese houses, as the country is located on volcanic islands, where often there are earthquakes… They build their houses with easily collapsible light weight materials to reduce casualties. Likewise my plans are always light weight, flexible and easily re-buildable… And even if broken, won’t cause casualties… Still I like the unplanned events (be it good or bad @ the time of happening) more than planned ones.

I don’t wanna bore you with too much of intro stuff. Yes… I am coming to the details of my second trip to Nandi Hills aka Nandidurg hill. Read about my first trip here. Last time it was with my friend Sreeji… After that I was hoping to visit the hills again with Sreeji  and Sethu and _____ … Yeah you guessed it… My 18 ' 55mm lens which I missed badly in my previous trip… Last time my roomie ' Johnny borrowed the lens from me before the trip… And I was not able to have any wide angle shots in the trip(what ever I can get @ 18mm focal length). But some how or the other, that hope didn’t work out and the trip didn’t happen as either of us will be busy or away from town. Slowly the idea itself faded off and Nandi hills remained as a place already visited in the list and when ever the need for a trip arises, some other location like Bannerghatta, Pottery town and all took precedence.

As I told earlier, it was very much unplanned. It was Lijo Jose, with a friend from Malayalikkoottam(A flickr group in which I am a member) who ignited the idea again. I was in office when he called me on Friday evening(4th September, 2009). He called me to ask if I am coming for a trip to Nandi Hills the next day early morning. I enquired about - who all will be joining in and he reverted saying he just had the idea of trip and need to call other friends from malayalikkoottam and check. I said ‘Ok’ and told him that I’ll update him on my presence when I get home. I checked with Johnny and Sreeji if they have any plans for Saturday. And when enquired, both of them have to go to office, and it was clear that I will have to die of boredom if I don’t go to Nandi hills. I called up Lijo to confirm my presence. Lijo informed me that no one was joining in for the trip which left Lijo and me as the only participants. I suggested that we take my car instead of going on bikes for which he agreed. We agreed to start @ 4.00 AM in the morning from Madiwala and dosed off to sleep. I hit the bed @ my usual time ' 12.00 AM. As promised earlier, Lijo called me up @ 3.30 AM to wake me up. Things were pretty fast after that, after completing the morning chores, I gathered my camera bag, tripod and cap, started my Santro and moved to Madiwala where Lijo resides. I had to wait for 5 mins and Lijo joined me. We set the wheels rolling towards Nandi hills at the agreed time itself.

As it was early in the morning, the roads of Bangalore were comparatively empty except for the vehicles running to Airport. We covered the airport and Devanahalli and turned towards Nandi hills. On the way, we saw a small Tea shop and stopped for a tea. It was still dark and there was no sign of fog in the route and we were afraid that, we may lose the charm of the foggy morning shots. But once when we started climbing the hills, we were relieved as we could see fog getting dense as we go up the hair pins. We stopped a couple of times as my Nikon and Lijo’s Canon was hungry for early morning fog filled shots. We enjoyed clicking the beauty of nature and in between we could see some bikes and cars coming up the way with headlights on tearing the veil of fog. We reached the top only at 7.00 as we enjoyed clicking a lot on the way. Fog still lingered over the hills and it was drizzling slightly. We headed towards Tippu’s drop where Tippu Sulthan used to kill his prisoners by pushing them from the top and letting them fall down from the hill. After clicking till ' 9.30, we had our breakfast there itself from a hotel there and decided to visit Bhoganandishwara temple.

We left Nandi Hills by 10 and climbed down the hills… Bhoganandishwara temple is situated in Nandi village which is located @ the base of Nandi Hills. It follows the Dravidian style of architecture. This temple is more than 1000 years old and was believed to be built by five dynasties over a period of 700 or more years. The Cholas, the Hoysalas, the Gangarasas, the Pallavas and the Vijayanagara Empire. Both of us were busy taking pictures there, as we had lot of ‘subjects’ to shoot. There we found one big pond - Shringi Tirtha surrounded by verandahs. We spend some time there also taking pictures. After we made sure that we have enough pics, we moved towards the car and raced back to Bangalore. On the way back, we saw some grape yards, and people were selling fresh grapes there. We bought some grapes and continued our return journey. Traffic was back to its full strength in the streets of Bangalore and we diluted ourselves in it and headed towards Madiwala… We reached Lijo’s house by around 2.00 ' 2.30 and had our lunch there. After spending some time with Lijo and Aadarsh(Lijo’s roomie) , I bid adieu and came home and started with processing the priced catches of the day. Yet another wonderful unplanned excitement came to an end…

Hope you like it. Waiting for your feedback… Febz

Here is one picture I took on the way…

Lone Traveller