Had a lovely relaxing weekend for a change. I was in the city and didn’t have meetings/work to attend. Managed to see the movie – namesake. Very well done movie. Leaving for Eravikulam again tomorrow on a quick trip to close the camp there for now. We will resume searching for new species once the monsoon starts. Picked up MotoRazr V3i again and I’ve already dropped it twice. I promise to update my photo gallery as soon as I get back from this trip.
I eventually did not find my cellphone and I spent some time last night researching on the latest phones. I was considering the Treo or Nokia R61, but looks like I’ll just go in for my old phone – MotoRazr V3i So last night I had this funny dream. I was at this photo expo and I was at the Nikon stall. They were showing off this new Treo handheld which could connect to the Nikon D200 and do all kinda fancy stuff. It could operate the camera via the Wifi adapter and you could control the whole camera remotely….
Lost my cell phone tonight. It feels like shit
A 30 min long exposure at eravikulam, facing south towards Anai mudi.
If any of you want to work as a Naturalist with one of the best wildlife company in India, then drop me a mail. Sarath, who was the one who offered me a job as a naturalist is looking for people for his new company Taj Safaris which is working in partnership with CC Africa. I have seen what they do, and sometimes I myself still get tempted to go there and join as a Naturalist. The pay is very decent, no previous wildlife experience needed ( just some interest as they will do the training) and some of the…
The Shola forests are like sponges. They store all the water during the monsoon and slowly squeeze it out rest of the year. This is the reason why the sholas have such thick density of plant life and are always humid and moist. Eravikulam National park has lot of streams originating from many of these sholas. The photos below is the stream closest to the hut.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the most striking thing about Eravikulam was the Landscape. The core area looks totally different from the tourism zone (Rajmalai), where 99.9% of the tourists land up. Most of the national park is about 2000 meters elevation, so most of the time, the peaks are above the clouds (hence called cloud forests). During winters, the temperature drops below freezing and even when I was there last week, the night temperatures were approaching close to freezing. I missed most of the morning golden light shots as it was just too cold to wake up…
If I could describe Eravikulam National Park in one single word then it would be Desert Massive open grasslands, immense spaces and an eerie silence. So quite, I was whispering most of the time and the silence is only broken at times by the wind or some small birds. The temperatures drop close to freezing point in the nights and it can get quite hot in the mornings. Since you have to walk for everything, your whole perspective of things change. I was walking between 15 to 35 km daily along with my gear. I lost 4 KG and my…
Starting tomorrow, I’m off again to Eravikulam National Park. This time however, I’m going into the core area with all the gear and I will mostly be there for about 10 days at least. There is one small issue though. I’m staying in an old hut which is at least 18km from the nearest human contact. No roads, no power, no connectivity. The hut is at least few hours trek through tough terrain to get to. So I’m hiring some 10 porters to carry all the gear and few weeks worth of supplies along. Taking a custom rigged solar charger…..
This news has been long time pending. For the next few months, I’m working on a BBC assignment with Sandesh on a wildlife documentary about the western ghats. Its a part research and part documentary project and the whole thing is being shot in pure HighDef video. The research bit is the search for some of the rare, extinct and maybe mythical creatures of the western ghats. Ofcourse I’ll still be lugging around my digital camera around with the video cameras. The last few weeks has been hectic as we were busy with pre-production – getting all the permits in…