April 2007 Desktop Calendar Wallpaper

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Here is the desktop calendar for April 2007. Click on the picture below to get the image in 1024x768 size.



About the Image
This image was made at Auli, Uttaranchal, India. The mountains seen are the Garhwal Himalayas and far below in the valley flows Alaknanda, one of the tributaries of Ganga. The farthest mountain in the image, a little to the right of center is Mt.Nanda Devi, one of the tallest mountains in India.

Also see
* Images from Auli taken in 2005
* Images from Auli in 2006.
* Auli Trip Report

My world66 Traveller Profile

Sunday, March 25, 2007

I found this world66 traveller profile generating tool today and tried it. Unfortunately, they got me entirely wrong!

	Your travel type: Travel Yup The Travel Yup likes exotic and adventurous travel, but prefers big cities with fast paced life. He has a keen interest in other cultures and always brings home a few souvenirs. Shopping in Bangkok, getting a tailor made suite in Kuala Lumpur, that's the kind of thing the Travel Yup is into. Even though he likes to get away, he prefers his travels to be comfortable.
	top destinations: Amsterdam Bangkok Ngorongoro	stay away from: Paris Venice Tokyo

get your own travel profile

Eaglenest - About Vacation For Conservation

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Travelling to Eaglenest National Park in Arunachal Pradesh
+Next: About travelling in the North East India
+Go to the beginning of the series

My primary intent of travelling to Arunachal Pradesh was to participate in Vacation For Conservation project.

Vacation For Conservation was an idea conceived by Ramana Atreya of Kaati Trust, Pune towards conserving the wilderness and biodiversity of Eaglenest National Park. It is part of a larger project called 'Eaglenest Biodiversity Project', intended to save Eaglenest National Park from degradation and destruction.

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BACKGROUND

Eaglenest National Park is located in the border of Arunachal Pradesh in West Kameng, adjoining Pakke Tiger Reserve in Assam. It is a region with widely varying altitudes - from 500m to as high as 3200m. The region has thickly wooded ever-green forest and has remained pristine except for a small mud-road that runs in the middle of the forest. But recently, the National Park's survival was threatened by Indian Army's decision to make a 2-lane all season road through the park. The website of Eaglenest Biodiversity Project lists the dangers that come with the road.

Until now Eaglenest has been protected by the inability of timber trucks to navigate the jeep track. While people indulged in some hunting the forest remained intact and has more-or-less recovered from the trauma of the construction of the first road 40 years ago. This protection is no longer valid. Some years ago the Indian army began widening the Eaglenest track to handle two lanes of their heavy truck traffic. They have also blasted new alignments in several sections devastating the fragile mountain terrain. Without going into the merits of the often twisted development v/s conservation debate it is clear that a regular highway will directly ruin more than 10% of the sanctuary area and furthermore will be a permanent canker through which the usual suspects -- from indigent encroachers to timber merchants; from subsistence poachers to high society carnivores with a taste for wild meat -- will ravage the area. At the moment the area has some breathing space with the Supreme Court staying all work on the road until final orders are passed.

The other threat to the National Park is common across all National Parks in India - man's conflict with nature. There is pressure from the increasing population which assumes a right to its forests in the form of chopping wood, hunting animals, etc. Eaglenest Biodiversity Project hopes to address these issues to protect the park area.

VACATION FOR CONSERVATION(VFC)

VFC is an idea that is meant to make the forest work for generating income to the locals without destroying it. It focuses on eco-tourism with complete involvement of the locals and generate income for them. Eco-tourism worldwide was an idea conceived with the same intent, but soon lost its original goal and turned out to be a money making option for large hotel and resort chains. But in Eaglenest, it serving the right purpose via VFC. Birders and wildlife enthusiasts are invited to travel to Arunachal and visit Eaglenest and spend time learning about and studying the birds and other wildlife in the region. The local Bugund community will charge royalties for each day of stay in the park, which will be used for the benefit of the community. In effect, people around the park benefit by conserving the park area and are also restrained from damaging the forest.

For more about Eaglenest Biodiversity Project and VFC, visit the project webpage.

I was in Arunachal as part of the first ever group of VFC participants. We spent a week in Eaglenest and had a good time there identifying many rare species of birds that we do not get to see elsewhere in India. More on it will follow in the coming days.

To be continued...

India Travel Blog Roadmap

Thursday, March 22, 2007

India Travel Blog has seen 100,000 visitors and 200,000 page views in last 14 months. It feels like a good milestone, but nevertheless only reminds me that I am long way to go.

I have a few ambitious plans to go with India Travel Blog. A year down the line, I hope to quit from my full time job and spend a lot of time travelling, writing content on this blog and elsewhere that could help fellow travelers and also let me make a living out of it. It sounds like an ambitious idea, and I think it really is one. To make travel writing to sustain my living and travelling, I need to add a lot more content here and also ensure that I have lot more visitors coming in.

Although I don't have completely concrete ideas, primary source of revenue then would be advertisements on this site. It would be supplemented by writing to travel magazines and may be by some travel related consulting if and where possible. If all this happens, I would naturally travel more than I now do, and hence update this blog with more content, making it a sustainable system.

It is a long way to go for this to happen, and traffic and income from this blog has to grow around ten times more than it now is, to reach the figures I have in mind. Of course, it is a difficult job and I have lot of work to do. And with so many travel sites mushrooming in the last few years, the job only gets tougher. My current plan is to exit from day-job at the end of this calendar year and set myself free. Time alone can tell if everything works as planned.

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Freeing myself up doesn't mean that I will be on the road most of the time. I know anything overdone can make you disinterested and also drain all the energy. Instead, I would travel on and off, but take more time to savor each place when I visit them. When I took off from work and travelled a lot last year, I understood that it is important to do it slowly and experience each place to its fullest. And when I am not travelling, I hope to spend my time doing all those things that I have intended to do but never been able to because of compulsions of a day-job. That includes, among a lot more things, to work for a good cause that could benefit a few people, to learn some musical instruments, read plenty of books that I have always wanted to read, go to dance classes, learn Spanish, horse riding, improve my swimming skills, go diving, learn to cook better and more variety of dishes, write useful software snippets for photographers and web designers and distribute them for free or a small fee. These are just a tip of the pile of things that I would love to do but haven't been doing. And because I might get a chance to do all these things if I can exit from my 9 to 5 schedule, it is important to me that my plans succeed. Of course, I hope I will be useful to many travellers who look for information if I manage to grow this blog. And your support and feedbacks are important to me in making my plans work. Wish me for good, and do be with me in these efforts.

Travelling to Eaglenest in Arunachal Pradesh

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Umananda Temple and Peacock Island, Guwahati
+Next: Vacation for Conservation
+Go to the beginning of the series

My fellow travellers started arriving later in the day. We all met in the hotel lobby, got to know each other and quickly went on with long conversations on birds, Eaglenest and other things we had in our mind for the journey into Arunachal Pradesh.

Our team was in interesting assortment of people. We had a management consultant who worked in the retail industry, a writer who write children's books, two students of post graduation in biodiversity, two software engineers, an officer in the Indian Forest Service, a beautician and a nomadic traveler(me!). Come to think of it, if it was a gathering of 10 people somewhere in southern parts of India, it would most likely have been 10 guys from the IT industry! Conservation and keen interest in birds and nature was the only thing we had in common that brought us together. It made us at home with each other and we quickly made friends and gelled well with each other.

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A bridge near Doimari village in Arunachal where we stopped for a short break. Note the thick forest all around

Some of us in the team were very keen to be of use in saving nature. One of the members spent a lot of her spare time working for 'Kids for Tigers'. The writer in the group spent a lot of time writing books to create awareness about environment in children and the IFS officer was leading conservation efforts in Kanchenjunga National Park. I was in great company and I knew that my days in Eaglenest are going to be spent doing something worthy.

We were up and ready to leave at 5am next morning and took a comfortable bus to Tezpur. It broke down after an hour of journey and we had to wait for a spare bus to arrive. Our enthusiastic birding group smelled opportunity in this too and were quickly out with their binocs and bird-books in the lookout for new birds in this unfamiliar region. Further, we stopped again at Nagaon for breakfast and reached Tezpur around 12pm.

There was a jeep waiting in Tezpur to take us through rest of the journey to our camp in Eaglenest. We drove through hot and humid planes via Missamari village in Assam and Doimari in Arunachal. We frequently stopped to sight and hear new birds we had never seen earlier, like the Lesser Adjutant Storks, Grey Backed Shrike and many more. The road started climbing as soon as we left Assam and crossed Arunachal border. Empty and barren stretches of Assam gave way to thick, impenetrable and undisturbed evergreen forests.

We drove till evening in thick forest with our narrow road bisecting the forest. The village of Doimari with a small population and a forest checkpost were the only places where we encountered signs of human presence. We continued to stop for seeing wildlife and were rewarded with sightings of Capped Langur, Khaleej Pheasant, Pied-Hornbill, etc.. We also passed a month old carcass of a huge decaying elephant which had slipped down a slide and died.

It was much after sunset when we reached our campsite. We were all tired after an entire day's journey and were glad to have finally made it. After a simple and filling dinner, we crashed in the camp looking forward to the next day.

To be continued...

Book Review: Elephas Maximus

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Author: Stephen Alter
Publishers: Penguin Books
Pages: 327

Unlike what it's title seems to indicate, Elephas Maximus is no science book for the students of biology, but a book for every one who has slightest interest in Indian Elephants, or Asian Elephants to precise. Stephen Alter has done considerable research on every aspects of the elephants in India and has presented it well enough to attract readers of every kind. In his own words -

In this book, I have tried to tell elephant's story in India through myth, art and literature, as well as something of its biology and natural history.

He travels all through the country in search of the elephants and visits them in the wilderness of National Parks, in temples in captivity, in breeding centers of state forest departments and anywhere else elephants might exist as myth or reality. He writes about their biology and natural history, besides covering cultural aspects of their relationship with man, historical status and position of elephants in India and also man-animal conflict. Alter also ponders on Ganesha, the elephant faced Hindu god. He digs through the ancient scriptures of Gajasutra and Kalidasa's Meghadoota to discover the role and status of elephants in the history of our society.

The emotional aspect of relationship between man and pachyderm is given considerable importance and is one of the highlights of the book. He writes about Mahouts who love their elephants and remain sensitive to the needs of the giant, about conservation efforts in India, and caring for the elephants. The pains of capturing elephants by Khedda and other measures in the past have been well elaborated.

Also notable are his coverage of elephants at various locations all over India, including Mysore, Guruvayur temple, Sonepur Mela, Mudumalai elephant camp, Corbett and Rajaji National Parks, Kabini and Kaziranga.

The contents of the book are well organized, has a good flow and makes a good reading for those with even the slightest interest on pachyderms.

Umananda Temple and Peacock Island, Guwahati

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Impressions of Guwahati
+Next: Travelling to Eaglenest National Park in Arunachal Pradesh
+Go to the beginning of the series

The next morning, I started out to Kacheri Ghat on the bank of Brahmaputra. I was taking a ferry from here to Peacock Island - a small landmass with a hillock housing the Umananda Temple.


Peacock Island. You can see how wide Brahmaputra is. Infact this is one of the areas where the river runs narrow compared to rest of Assam

As my ferry took off, I realized how huge Brahmaputra is. It was summer time when most of the rivers in India empty or at least mellow, but none of that applies to Brahmaputra. Even when the water level is low, it still is wide and flows at a considerable speed. Despite being so large, the map shows that Brahmaputra flows in a narrow channel near Guwahati compared to rest of Assam. I got to see her again in Tezpur where the bridge across the river is a few miles long.

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Ferry to Peacock Island

I got down from the ferry and walked around on a bridle path that took me around the island. It took less than 10 minutes to complete the circle. The island has a mix of Bamboo and evergreen tropical trees and is rocky at some parts. The tiny island housed lot of life. I saw a few Asian Koels, some warblers, a Grey Tit, Magpie Robins, Jungle Babblers and a bunch of Mynas. I returned to this island a few weeks later to get photographs of the Golden Langurs, and also shot pictures of a pair of Grey Tits. The Langurs are a star attraction of the island.


Grey Tit

Golden Langurs are endemic primates found only in Manas National Park bordering Assam and Bhutan. A priest of Umananda temple is said to have brought a few young ones to the island and let them free. They grew up in the island, confined by the Brahmaputra and have grown used to humans. They are so accustomed that you can sit right next to them like you would sit with a buddy, and they still ignore your presence. May be they would even be thinking about saying hello to you but are constrained of speech. The Langur's eye is very human like and has a strange draw when you look at it. They also looked very bored and lazy as they have little to do but eat what people give them, and roam around in the tiny island.


A Golden Langur

Umananda temple is located at the center of the island on the top of a hillock. It is a small temple, with the sanctum sanctorum located below ground level. Sanctorum is lit by wick lamps and little sunlight enters in. The burning lamps and the darkness surrounding it create an atmosphere of peace in the room.

I returned from the island and checked if I can take an evening cruise on Brahmaputra. But the cruises were not operating owing to a holiday, so all I could do is to spend the evening in my hotel.

To be continued..

Impressions of Guwahati

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Bangalore to Guwahati
+Next: Umananda Temple and Peacock Island, Guwahati
+Go to the beginning of the series

I had a free day at Guwahati. I had arrived a day earlier than I needed to, so I can hang around and get a feel of Guwahati.

When I started for North East, I had an impression of Guwahati and rest of the North East in my mind. I had presumed that Guwahati would be a small town nestled between hills with Brahmaputra flowing on one side of the town. I expected the weather would be pleasant to cold and raining at times. I had distinctly remembered reading a news report a year ago that Guwahati is struggling to grow and is suffering from lack of space, resulting in hills in the periphery brought down to make way for construction(illegally, I presume). The mention of these hills had reinforced my impressions of Guwahati as small hilly town.

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When I cruised down from airport to the city, I could see that the town is really growing, and fast. Real estate business seemed to be booming like any other city in India. Half the ad-hoardings on the road were of steel bars, cement and the like. As we cruised from airport to city, I realized that Guwahati is not a small town, but fairly big and growing. The city lies in the plains of Assam sandwiched between the hills of Meghalaya on one side and the mighty Brahmaputra on the other side, leaving it without much room to grow. It was just the beginning of summer and it was already getting hot and sticky during the day, not exactly the weather I had presumed.

Eastern part of the city has many small hills that probably mark the end of the Khasi hills of Meghalaya. It is these hills that are slowly brought down to make way for construction. The way Guwahati is growing, it feels just like Bangalore - in a mess!

Next day, I got to see another problem that plagues the city - traffic. In city's busy Paltan Bazaar area where my hotel is located, traffic hardly gets to move forward. Roads often get choked for hours. The traffic is so immobile at places that you don't even have to worry about parking space - just leave your car on the tail of the traffic and come back after you finish your work - it is very likely that nothing around has moved an inch and your car is safe where it was left! It is no exaggeration - I did see someone doing just that!

Two weeks later when I returned to Guwahati, it was raining and the traffic scene was worse. There was slush everywhere and the drains were overflowing but the traffic was no different, making it miserable for a pedestrian to move around.

To be continued..

Journey from Bangalore to Guwahati

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+ Previous: Beginning of the series
+ Next: Impressions of Guwahati

Today is a day for commuting, and a boring one at it. I need to catch two flights and spend nearly 10 hours going from my home in Bangalore to my hotel in Guwahati.

I started early from home and reached airport as early as two hours before departure, fearing traffic jams created by early morning rush. It is after reaching the airport that I realized it was a Sunday. Such things are bound to happen if you are not going to office for many months!

The airport is crowded and it looks like a mess. I was hungry and there was no good place to eat. You don't get a decent breakfast there, but some odd foreign things like sandwich and such sundries. I don't understand why they can't take some trouble to serve some local food. I would rather have Idli-Vada or Dosa in the morning than the stale yesterday's sandwich microwaved to make you feel slightly better. It is the same story in other airports in India too. Why don't they serve what people actually want to eat? A small restaurant that would serve idli and dosa in south or paratha in the north would make a lot more sense than the boring plastic wrapped sandwich. I have had Dosa in an airport outside India, but I haven’t seen an airport in the country that served it. Anyway…

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The airport felt more like a bus-stand. The days of screens announcing arrival, departures, check-ins and boarding seem to be history. Now there were airlines executives shouting at the gates like

"Air Deccan Delhi... Air Deccan Delhi…"
"Jet Airways Chennai... Jet Airways Chennai..."

I wonder what comes next? Two different airline execs fighting for more space or time? Hope it doesn't come to that.

I had plenty of time in my hands to kill before boarding my flight, so I settled down in a corner amidst the chaos, pulling out a newspaper. Once someone 'shouted' about my flight, I got in and settled down comfily in my window seat.

A nice thing about Bangalore-Kolkata flight is that it goes just above the coastline and you get an aerial view of the east coast. I remember seeing Chilika Lake during my last Kolkata flight but this time I fell asleep much before we passed above that.

I was killing time in Kolkata waiting for my next flight as I read through my boarding pass envelope. It read -

"You must identify your baggage at transit point. Unidentified luggage will not be loaded to the next flight"

That sounded stupid and funny. I spent a good amount of time and effort in Bangalore to get my baggage security checked, identified and tagged and left with the care of airline authorities. And as my transit point arrives, they don't remember it anymore and want me to go back to them and beg them to board my luggage to the next flight! But the last thing I would have wanted is to see my luggage remain stranded in Kolkata airport while I moved on to Guwahati, so I went and inquired only to be brushed off by an unfriendly lady who said "that is not necessary, you can go to the gates and board the flight now". As I moved towards the gate, I was glad to see that the gates were not in a mess like it was at Bangalore.

There is a change in the air in Kolkata-Guwahati flight. Flight attendants seemed relaxed, and removed their pretentious appearance and fake smiles. They often spoke to passengers in Hindi, which they never seemed to do in the main routes. But then a lot of people in the flight spoke neither English nor Hindi. An old lady sat next to me and she seemed to be unsure of what to do when she was served snacks. One of the air hostesses tried speaking to the lady but all attempts to communicate failed, as they knew no language in common.

We had a stopover at Agartala before moving on to Guwahati. It seemed strange - I never thought I would ever find myself in such a remote corner of the country.

As we took off from Kolkata, we flew over Bangaldesh before reaching Agaratala. From the top, Bangaladesh appeared to be completely devoid of trees. Nevertheless, every inch of the land was green, with paddy fields spreading as far as the eyes could see. Sunlight reflected from the thin layer of water covering the paddy fields. Brahmaputra looked wide and full even from high in the sky. It was a short 30 minutes flight, and we were back in the Indian skies ready to land in Tripura. We next flew over Meghalaya, which was hilly and green, its valleys filled with rivers and streams. It was early evening when I landed in Guwahati and made my way to the hotel in a taxi.

To be continued..

Travelling in the North-East India

Monday, March 05, 2007

Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Next: From Bangalore to Guwahati

I spent almost a month last year travelling in the seven-sisters - the North-Eastern states of India. I was primarily there to visit Eaglenest National Park in Arunachal Pradesh on a project called Vacation For Conservation(VFC). I will write more about VFC in the days to come. While I was there, I decided to explore rest of the North East, a region that is not well known to many.

My itinerary in NorthEast lasted for nearly four weeks. I started my journey of North East like everyone else - by landing in Guwahati, the gateway to North East. I spent a day here and met other people who were part of VFC project as they arrived. We moved on from Guwahati to Eaglenest directly in an exciting journey that took us the whole day. I stayed in Eaglenest for a week before we continued to the highest region in entire North East - Tawang and beyond. Next, we returned to Assam to spend a couple of days in Potasali Angling Camp in the banks of Bharali river(Bharali, Bhorelli, Jia Bhorelli), on the edge of Nameri National Park. My next destination was one of the most sought after destinations in the North East - Kaziranga National Park, home to the endagered Indian Rhinos. I left Assam again and headed towards Shillong in Megahalaya. With Shillong as base, I spent time exploring its neighbourhood and Cherrapunjee before I got back to Guwahati and returned to Bangalore.

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I will spend next few weeks working on the North East story, writing in detail about each of these places. Keep coming back to read about all that..

To be continued..

March Newsletter

Saturday, March 03, 2007

The India Travel Blog newsletter dispatch is sporadic and infrequent, but I am managing to send it out once a month for last couple of months. Posted here is the March newsletter that was emailed today. To get this occasional newsletter, which announces important happenings in India Travel Blog and also summarizes the recent content, subscribe to it by keying in your email id on the box at the top-right corner

Hello,
Thank you for subscribing to India Travel Blog newsletter. Feel free to forward this to anyone who would be interested.

MARCH 2007 DESKTOP WALLPAPER CALENDAR

March 2007 desktop wallpaper calendar features picturesque Matupetty Dam near Munnar, Kerala. Go here to download it.

MONTH OF FEBRUARY ON INDIA TRAVEL BLOG.

In Feb, I completed the series on Kerala, which I was writing for a month. The index to all articles on the Kerala series are here. The series covers the places Bandipur, Wayanad, Kozhikode, Guruvayur, Cochin and Periyar.

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Other than the Kerala series, I wrote about folk festival Janapada Jaatre that happens in Bangalore. Read about it here

I am also trying to introduce other travel bloggers who write on India, and the first of them is Mridula, whose interview you can be read here


I am starting the series on my journey to North East India on second week of March, which should keep running on the blog for next two months. Keep dropping by the blog home for regular updates.

March 2007 Desktop Calendar

Friday, March 02, 2007

A new month is just beginning and here is the desktop calendar for March 2007. Click on the picture below to get the image in 1024x768 size.



About the image

The reservoir in the picture is Matupetty Dam in Munnar, Kerala, India. This image was made on a late winter morning four years ago.

Summer is here...

Thursday, March 01, 2007

A few busy weeks have kept me from updating this space as frequently as I used to. Hopefully busy days are past and I am back to spending more time writing on this blog.

Here in Bangalore, summer seems to have suddenly attacked us since the beginning of this week, and sun has been growing stronger by the day. It would be a matter of a few more weeks before northern parts of the country also start getting warmer.

Summer is definitely not the time of the year for travel, at least in the plains of India. But our vast country has always something to offer, and this is the right time to be in the mountains and hill stations. People in the north have options in plenty, with the mighty Himalayas spreading all over north of Delhi. Summer is also a good time for sighting wildlife in North India although weather can be hot in the National Parks. Personally, I have some time off this summer and hope to spend some time in Arunachal Pradesh, and may be a high altitude trek somewhere in Himachal. There is a temptation to get to Sikkim too and that depends on availability of time.

If you are wondering where to go this summer, here are some of the places you can read about in India Travel Blog, suitable for a summer holiday.

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NORTH
* Gochela in Sikkim - high altitude trek
* North Sikkim - Driving to Yumthang Valley and Gurudongmar
* Auli, Uttaranchal
* Corbett National Park
* Rajaji National Park

SOUTH
* Coorg
* Munnar, Ooty and Kodaikanal
* Periyar Tiger Reserve

What are your travel plans for this summer?