After wanting it for more than a year, it was finally time to do the jump for the new Mahindra Scorpio. Too bad the new Scorpio does not come in green, so I went for the next best color – Ivory Grey. I just don’t have budget right now to paint it all green. The vehicle comes with 4-wheel drive, which is perfect for all my wildlife needs. The color is quite decent for forest use anyway. The CRDe engine is very quiet and Mahindra finally fixed the suspension issues that the original Scorpios had. There is enough place at…

She took me, others and a lot of gear to some of the highest peaks in south India, rubbed shoulders with many wild elephants and came head to head with wild tigers. After serving me for 5 years, its finally time for her to retire. Lot of other things will be new for me this year. A new job and a new project, a new vehicle and lot more new things. One of the new year resolutions is to keep this blog more active this year.

It’s the worst thing that US has done since the post-911 attacks. Not just the execution, but the fact that the actual execution was filmed and telecasted all around the world. The scene somehow was much more gruesome than all those al-qaeda be-heading videos. I just saw the video of the execution and can’t help but think that George Bush deserves that more than Saddam. George Bush killed more people than saddam indirectly and has put the whole world in an unstable future. Muslim countries will unite even more to fight against the US now and if I was living…

Google Maps just updated their database to include streets, roads and place names of all major cities in India. Check it out. Now its time to see India specific mashups.

Lately, I have been observing the beggars at all the traffic junctions in Bangalore when I’m stuck for a long time in traffic. I’ve noticed a very important pattern. At any big traffic junction, the traffic at the signal has to wait anywhere from 120 to 180 seconds these days. A beggar can cover atleast 30 vehicles in this time and atleast 1 in 5, give the beggars some money. This money these days is anywhere from Rs 1 to Rs 5. I’ve even seen a guy give out Rs 100 to a beggar. So at a 3 min traffic…

This was long time pending. Last month, I got a chance to make a quick trip to Munnar and Thattekad with the excellent bird guide – Eldose. I decided to go on this trip in the last min, as Eldose called me up and promised to show me two of the rarest bird species in south India – The Broad-tailed grassbird and the White-bellied shortwing. I took the next flight out of Bangalore to Cochin to meet him as my friends Ramki, Swarna and Saurab were planning to go there as well. Traveling in low-cost airline is great for personal…

The internet is a very dull place at 3am.

Finally a blog post after many weeks. I’ve been so busy, I’ve barely had any time to sleep. We had a mini bird survey at BR hills. It went really well and I shall write about it very soon LOT of new photographs to post-process. Will take me atleast another week to catch-up. Made a 4 day trip to Munnar and Thattekad in between and I got to photograph some of the rarest birds in India. I barely covered foss.in this time around. The BR hills calendar is the official foss.in calendar (thanks to SANIsoft for sponsoring them). If you…

President looking at my Wildlife photographs When the President Abdul Kalam was at BR hills, and after seeing the forests and the wildlife photographs, he spoke about the concept of Carbon credits and how it was giving incentives for companies to reduce their carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The concept is pretty simple : A company that exceeds its limit of carbon emission, has to buy these extra credits from companies who have either reduced their emission or from people who have switched to using renewable energy. After that he mooted the idea of ‘Forest Credits’ in similar lines. He…

For the coming new year, I’m putting together a table-top calendar of some of my best Wildlife Photographs. The plan is to get this printed with one of the best printers in India with the best color and paper quality. Also want to use this as an opportunity to raise funds for the conservation projects at BR hills. To cover the costs of this good quality printing, I need some large-scale orders. Basically looking for some corporate orders of 500+ calendars. Do let me know if you or your company is interested in these calendars where part of the profits…