Into the wild…

Last year I was a tad bit disappointed as I could not travel much. Ever since the trip to South Korea in 2007, I was traveling abroad at least once every year. I badly wanted that to continue, but 2011 did not give me a chance. 2012 arrived with a bang, and the entire year was dotted with travel. Both, international and within India. I took almost 24 flights, more than 9 train journeys, a few bus journeys and a few long road trips in the year. I won’t even add the total kilometers covered. I visited 18 places out of which almost 15 (including 8 major cities) were visited for the first time ever. All those trips were lovely and memorable, but the year ended with me going on a trip to one of the most beautiful forests of India and spending close to a week, in the lap of nature, into the wild!

We visited the Kanha National Park, and Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, and in between spent a couple of days marveling at the gorgeous Marble Rocks gorge in the Narmada river basin.

It is a little bit inconvenient to reach those places from Hyderabad. While going we had to take a train to Katni (MP) and then a taxi to Bandhavgarh, and on the way back, we drove from Kanha till Nagpur and then took a train. Jabalpur, Katni, Gondia and Nagpur are the nearest railway stations that have decent connectivity to most major Indian cities.

All throughout our vacation, we stayed at various MP Tourism Hotels/Resorts/Lodges. They were not “the best” at each location, but certainly in the top 5.

Bandhavgarh was our first stop. This is one of the smaller forest reserves in MP, but with one of the largest tiger populations. There are about 60 odd tigers here, and because of the small size, the probability of spotting a tiger is much higher than that in other forest reserves in India, the highest in fact. We did two safaris, one in the evening that lasted 2 hours, and the other early in the morning that lasted 4 hours. The best times of the day to spot animals is either just after sunrise or just before sunset. Summer is even better, we were told.

The guy in the pic above was our guide, Anil Sharma… if you ever travel to Bandhavgarh, and happen to stay at MPTDC White Tiger Forest Lodge, ask for Anil Sharma’s services during the safari! He is the best safari person they have, and has been there for the last 20 years. He knows the forest inside out and will tell you amazing stories! Whether you see a tiger or not is a matter of chance, but your guide being expert enough to understand animal alert calls and track tiger footprints is a subtle key.

The next stop was Jabalpur’s Bheda Ghats, where we spent a couple of nights to take a break, and enjoy the vistas provided by the beautiful Marble Rocks gorge formed by the Narmada. From there we moved on to Kanha, the largest of the forest reserves in MP, and also the best! At Kanha, we stayed for two nights at Baghira Log Huts (Kisli), run by MPTDC and one night at Forest Safari Lodge (Mukki). The Baghira Log Huts are the only place to stay within the core area of the forest. All other resorts are either in the buffer zone, or beyond that. Being in the core area meant that the animals would come on a safari to meet us rather than us going out looking for them. Monkeys, spotted deer and sambar were constant around the huts. The nights were dotted with deer alarm calls (on seeing a tiger around). We did 2 safaris in the Kisli/Sarhi zone of Kanha, and one safari in Mukki zone. We could spot more than a handful of the 30,000 odd species of animals/birds at Kanha. And sprawling meadows gave us a chance to see herds of deer, and much more, grazing happily in the sun. Unfortunately, the best we could get to spotting a panther, was a Leopard whom we saw swiftly jumping across the road. We did not see any tiger at Kanha (Kanha is twice as big as Bandhavgarh and has lesser tigers, so the probability of spotting one is really low). Below are some pics from our trip…

In the pic above, clockwise from top-left: Jackal, Male Barking Deer, Male Barasingha with Spotted Deer, Female Barking Deer.

In the pic above, clockwise from top-left: Deer in various parts of Kanha, with a fawn, in a herd, with family and solo.

Most people go on safaris with a single intention – spot the Tiger. It was very sad to see depressed faces of groups returning from safaris without spotting a tiger. We were also one such group after our first safari, when all we could spot was a tiger pawmark. We met the Tiger during our second safari at Bandhavgarh. The first sight was from a distance, the Tiger retreating into the woods from a meadow. Sharmaji, our safari driver was quick to turn around and take us to the spot where he anticipated the Tiger would come out from on the other side of the woods. We waited and watched in awe as the majestic creature walked out – stood on the road, turned around to show us his full strength, and turned back to climb up the hills on the other side. We watched as he lifted his tail up and walked away with pride. Seeing the Tiger on the morning of 25th December was our Santa gift :) Honestly speaking, even we went out on all the 5 safaris with the hope of seeing just the Tiger, but it was many times more pleasing to see so many other beautiful animals and colourful little birds in the forest.

Monkeys were a common sight all throughout our stay in Kanha, and above are 4 snaps from the hundreds I clicked for them. They posed and acted funny too!

I am bad with remembering names of cereals, flowers and birds. But these gorgeous birds we spotted at Kanha will be remembered for a long time: In the pic above, clockwise from top-left: Indian Roller (Neelkanth), gorgeous Peacock (I had never seen so many peacocks ever in my life!), Indian Pond Heron, Owl (I think Burrowing Owl, though I’m not sure).

In the pic above, clockwise from top-left: Diya, my adorable niece, Baghira Log Huts, Dhuandhar Falls, Bheda Ghat at the Narmada, Dense Bandhavgarh Forest.

And of course some usual crazy stuff from the two of us :) In the bottom left photo is my sister-in-law and her family… they had planned this amazing trip for us!

Roshnai has always wanted to go on a jungle safari, more specifically, African Safari. I, however, had never been in favour of one. Now my thoughts have changed and I would love to visit the Serengeti soon!

I spent the 31st evening at my cousin’s place in Nagpur before catching a train back to Hyderabad. We had all plans to scream “Happy New Year” and scare fellow sleeping passengers in the train, but the train arrived 2 hours later than scheduled. That meant we had to watch the fireworks in the sky waiting at the railway station and greeting each other :)

With the year ending well, we have already started planning for our 2013 vacation/vacations! The idea is the have at least 2 vacations, preferably one within India, and one abroad :)

If you plan to visit Kanha/Bandhavgarh and need more information, you know what to do :)

P.S. Please excuse me for the rather large and in-your-face Copyright Watermarks I have used in this post. Most internet users do not think twice before feeling free to lift images from blogs. Ask me and I will be happy to share them with you!

You! Sorry, We!

When I see people spitting on the roads, I am reassured that we really cannot rid our nation of some of the serious problems (such as corruption, but not limited to) our country is plagued with. We need a change of mindset and not laws or their enforcement! Our politicians are not corrupt, young men, we are corrupt, our minds are corrupt! Accept it before you share that photo of the RTI guy on Facebook! This is why I believe Anna along his past and present team are not addressing the key issue.

Take this post to be a post-script for an old post on similar topic. This would have been a tweet, but it exceeded 140 characters by a large number.

Of One Million Fireflies and Water-falls

Traveling without a camera is not what I enjoy doing, but I do relish those trips just a little bit more. Looking through the camera lens does not narrow my perspective but it does narrow my perspective, you know what I mean! I visited Goa the first time ever, more than 25 years after I was born. By then more than 75% of the people I knew have been to Goa, and more than 50% of females I knew had at least one album titled  ‘Goa!!’ on Facebook! Unfortunately that was my first trip since owning a DSLR that I completed without a camera. Consequence was that I do not have a blog post on one awesome trip I’ve had. Well the reason I did not carry my DSLR was that activities planned in Goa were a little shady ;) (common, I am just being honest here) and I did not want to lose a great camera. I thought I’d never repeat the mistake, and actually I did pretty well keep up to my own expectations till the following happened.

Somewhere in the middle of last year, we were invited to join a wonderful group on a village expedition in the not-so-lofty-but-loftier-than-Lonavala Western Ghats near Kalsubai. We were on our first rural tourism itinerary for two days to a tiny village called Purushwadi in the early monsoons. Coming back to cameras, well I did not forget to carry the camera, but – wait for it – I forgot to charge the battery! Add to that the fact that I even forgot to carry the battery charger – there anyway wasn’t a charging point where we stayed.

So anyway, the whole trip was excellent. Started and ended with some most amazing views of the Sahyadris, and driving atop the hills at 3000ft above sea was awesome in itself. But the fun of the trip was the stay at Purushwadi. The trip was organized by Grassroutes, and we stayed with the locals, in tents! It was a two day trip, and the first day was spent having lunch and tea with the locals in their huts, and then going on treks, plucking fruits from the farms, and sliding in the mud! Post dinner, we all walked out into the bushes around the village, away from the people and into the wild. We were only following two things (three actually) – the darkness, and the sounds of the insects (and glows!)

Yes, the key attraction of the whole trip was sight of a million fireflies! Literally! The first time in my life, I had seen more than 2 fireflies, and now make it a million! It was an awesome sight and we just stayed there for like an hour. None of the cameras could capture the sight, and such things are best left to be seen with your own eyes than a camera’s.

The next day was fun filled. Starting with another trek and some more fruit plucking, we got a chance to plough the fields, clean some peanut pods, and eat awesome poha for breakfast. But what really got the group going, was gorging on buckets full of ripe and delicious mangoes and then – jumping into the pond of cool monsoon fresh water. I think, if the highlight of the first day was watching the fireflies, that for the second day was jumping into the pond and splashing around endlessly! The group splashed endlessly around the lazy river, and dived into the pond all afternoon. The sense of awesomeness that was created the previous evening by the fireflies, was taken to new heights by this feeling of conquering your self that jumping into a body of water gives you. The moment had suddenly come alive, and the feeling was fresh! After the mesmerizing dance of the fireflies had left us all wondering, the swims and the dives got the group alive again, and the feeling of being Alive is Awesome! The tiredness of the treks was gone, and trip was on its way to an epic conclusion.

This post is written for Cinthol’s new Alive is Awesome marketing campaign.

The above photo has been clicked by Dipna and all rights are reserved by her. Thanks Nickolai and Sunny for the photograph.

Enter a post title here, also upload a background image

Hello friend. How have you been? I saw you uploaded an awesome photograph of a lonely girl standing on a pristine beach with white sands and blue waters, with arms wide open! You look so pretty! Oh, and I saw your Twitter profile, wow those bangles in the background photo look amazing! Sad, we don’t see them much in the markets these days. Where did you get to buy them? And who took that picture?

You ‘liked’ that picture of the Phantom Sweet Cigarettes, doing rounds of ‘sharing’ on Facebook, didn’t you? Looks like you are an active member of this group called “Proud to be an Indian”. What fun it was smoking virtual rings of those sweet Phantom Cigarettes, scaring shit out of the elders. Cool yeah, long lost memories, good to have them refreshed.

Oh by the way, did you know that that image was actually created by me, from one of my photographs? Yeah, I searched high and low all over Pune to find those Phantoms. Eventually I had to mail the CEO of Harnik Sweets, Mr Gautam Harnik, asking him where I could find them. Here, you can read more about that story and also see the photograph on my original blog post. Go ahead, feel free.
http://blog.aditto.info/2009/02/14/231-of-phantom-sweet-cigarettes-and-ravalgaon/

Okay. Did you see that same photograph? Here it is again in case you felt too lazy to go and read the blog (I know you must be lazy, clicking “Like” and “Share” is easier than right-clicking on a link and reading it in another tab while you are at something else).

What I actually want you to see is that fine script at the bottom right end of the photo. You see that? It states that I hold the copyright for this image. Also, the disclaimer on my blog prohibits you from picking stuff without attributing it to me. Here is the link for that:
http://blog.aditto.info/disclaimer/

Essentially, you have violated my copyright by using my content, without attributing it to me. Worse, you even went one step ahead by cropping out the copyright line from the image. Well, you did not of course do it. Someone really smart must have done it, someone who knows how to use image editing tools too! You just promoted it further, you just shared it with an even larger audience. You just hit the “Like” and the “Share” buttons on Facebook. Simple for you, no? Not for me.

This is really trivial. It is a photograph that represents sweet memories of my childhood. But not just mine, it represents memories of millions of you, who are almost my age, who have lived during the times of the Phantom Sweet Cigarettes. I would be more than happy to share this with you, share the photo, share the stories, whatever you wish. I am happy to see that my photograph makes you happy.

Unfortunately, the story does not end there, I am pretty sure it won’t. This is not about sharing memories, this is about lifting content, without attribution or permission. I do not even get a link back to my blog, not even a ‘Thank You’ note. Some days later, the same FB group would have millions of followers/members and maybe even advertisers. The same FB group could use content uploaded on its page as its own for any kind of activity – marketing, political unrest movement, stalking people, anything – I am scared to even think of this. Content created by me or thousands of bloggers like me who use original content, gets shared across thousands of social media networks, groups and forums. Passing on links to the original content is acceptable, downloading and uploading as your own is not!

I also do a little bit of photography in my spare time. I make sure that I upload images with copyright information / watermarks only. However, I do not use tactics such as putting a huge watermark that covers 75% of the image. I think that really reduces the quality of my images and the appeal they carry. But I do expect you to respect the fact that I own the content I create – the photos I take and upload on my blog, the articles I write here, and anything I put on Facebook and Twitter. To think of it, Facebook and Twitter are turning out to be massive problems for people concerned about safety and copyrights. I never know when the photo I clicked of my beautiful friend will be downloaded from my photography page by a stupid girl only to upload it back as her own profile picture! People like you are shameless enough to put beautiful photographs as your cover photos on Facebook or background images on Twitter. Yes, websites like Pintrest scare me. It makes me wonder if the price of information and content on the internet is really zero!

A lot of bloggers are up in arms against this free lifting of content from our blogs. Read stuff that the Idea-Smithy has written on similar issues http://ideasmithy.wordpress.com/?s=copyright .

It is sad to know of such practices. Show some creativity guys, show some maturity. Show some decency to acknowledge the fact that you do not own the content you have uploaded. This does not go out only to you, but all the news reporters, and editors, and wannabe media people – You CANNOT lift images from someone’s blog or Facebook page to use it in a story or campaign of your own, without permission, or attribution and at times without paying a royalty.

Even as I publish this blog post, I am aware that there could be some content on my blog that is not created by me, for which I have failed to provide attribution. I am going through all my blog posts to check for those and make this blog a cleaner place.

Photowalking–Hyderabad

Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune in India,
Chicago, New York, San Francisco, in the US,
Busan, in South Korea – were photo walked so far… This is the 8th city in the series…

The above photos capture what you can expect to find in a typical market on the streets of old Hyderabad. The Charminar, and the Chowmahalla Palace have been intentionally left out. You can find them in heaps on the internet.

Hyderabad is great for old buildings, jewellery, antiques, traditional medicines, spicy food and some random things… Enjoy!