Uncategorized

Finally its documentary over (Atleast the filming bit). The edit is scheduled in April and hopefully the documentary will air sometime towards the end of the year. The final shoot was quite tough. Had to walk up and down Eravikulam National park with all the heavy gear on my back. Sometimes I ended up walking more than 35 KM a day. The night temperates touched sub zero (Never imagined I would experience -6 C in south india) and the days were hot and sweaty. Also finally managed to climb up Anai Mudi, the tallest peak south of Himalayas. The view…

Heading out now on my final filming schedule for the Western Ghats documentary. Our last shoot is at Eravikulam again and we are all back at the end of the month. Its going to be freaking cold up there at this time of the year. I’ve still not had time to process all my Namdapha trip photos. Promise to post them all as soon as I get back.

Happy New Year Folks I spent the new years Scuba diving near Goa and it ROCKED. What did you do ?

Yuthi is one of the young chaps from the Lisu tribe who was with us on our trip at Namdapha. He was helping us carry our luggage as we crossed the National park in over 10 days. The other Lisu men used to call him ‘Superman’ because he was the strongest one of the lot. He was also the happiest of the lot because on Dec 14th (today) was his wedding and he was really excited about that. On the 4th day of our trip he fell ill and we decided to let him rest at the ’52 mile’ settlement…

OK, so I’m all set to go on the largest adventure/expedition of my life. Got all my medications, all my gear packed up and hopefully my camera will last till the end of the trip. If time permits, hope to swing via Kaziranga on the way out. See ya all in 3 weeks time.

The expedition is 2 weeks long and I do not have access to any source of electricity along the way. I tried the AA battery pack for my D200 and D70, but they hardly last. I tried bunch of solar options, but either the gear is too heavy or not powerful enough to charge these batteries. So I need to pack up as much juice for my camera as possible. If any of you have a spare Nikon D200/D80/D70/D50 battery, I’d really appreciate it if you can let me borrow it for 3 weeks.

I guess I went through a writers block the last month or so. I thought I’d mention this before I disappear this weekend. I’m heading out on a 3 week vacation to Namdapha tiger reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. Namdapha has been my dream for many years and after months of planning, the trip is finally happening. Namdapha is the only place in the world which supports 4 big cat species – Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and the Clouded Leopard. Also on the trip are some of the amazing scientists from NCF. The plan is to start from Miao and trek…

Well, yeah I’ve been either traveling or have been having writers block. Our monsoon shoot has finally come to an end and will be in Bangalore for a month or so with small travels here and there. This is the time to catch up on urban life, fix strained relationships and striking things off the todo list etc.

Sometime early last week, the Nilgiri tahr that we were hoping to film came down from the highlands. However the next day, a pack of wild dogs came and attacked the herd and all of them ran back up the hills. We were on our way when this happened, so when this happened, we just drove back to Bangalore. They have come down again it seems and mostly this will be our last chance to film them. Sandesh and Mandanna are already there and I’m leaving tomorrow morning to join them. I would have never guessed, goats would rule my…

Fuel to drive to Tamil Nadu : Rs 1400 Movie tickets : Rs 40 Watching ‘Shivaji – the Boss’ in a B-grade theater in coimbatore : Priceless What sucked was the fact that most people in the theater were family types and me and my friend prashanth were the only ones whistling and clapping for every one of Rajini’s killer dialogs. The movie itself was very racist and has been done with a poor taste. But then again its a Rajini movie and the dialogs totally rocked. “Panni kuttama varum, Singam single aa than varum”