I had heard and seen a lot of videos about Sunderbans, but traveling to that place was not in my immediate list of places to visit. But a few months ago, I was invited to join a few people to travel to Sunderbans and then further to North West Bengal to the pristine forests of Chilapata and Buxa.  It would be a week long trip, and though I knew that I did not have the long lenses to photograph the bird life in these areas, I decided that travel is more important here, than the act of getting good photos.  I did however manage to photograph a lot of wildlife, and had a great time doing macro photography.

Life in the Sunderbans revolves around boats. It is the only form of transport that can be used to transport goods and people to different islands in what is the largest block of mangrove forest in the world.  There is a noticeable time difference in how the day progresses. Here, the sun rises well before 5:30AM and by 5:30PM in the evening, it is dark.

It is quite an experience to just sit back, and explore the creeks knowing that the waters harbor salt water crocodiles and also the famous man eating tigers of Sunderbans.

Salt Water Crocodile

The place also has a lot of other wildlife such as King Cobras, Water Monitors, Jungle Cats etc, but they are elusive and tough to get and I was not hoping to be that lucky on my very first visit.  We did manage to find a lot of other things tough, and if anything, this was more of a reconnoissance trip.  I will definitely be making more visits, and hopefully with better photography gear to try and document more about this unique place.

After spending a few days in Sunderbans, we headed to Chilapata Wildlife Sanctuary in the north of West Bengal. This place has very pristine forests, and is great for observing and photographing butterflies. We also visited Buxa Tiger Reserve where I had a good sighting of the Collared Falconet.  Both places have excellent photography opportunities and are well connected by air and road as well.  We found a few snakes, some interesting spiders and lot of birds during our 4 day stay in Chilapata.

Ant-mimicking Spider

Monocoled Cobra

Palm Civet

Wasp Mantis

As a info note, if anyone is keen on visiting Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary during a visit to Chilapata, it is best avoided. The place is a joke, the guides there have little or know knowledge of the wildlife there, and drive recklessly through the forests,even though there is a imposed speed limit of 20kms/hr in reserve forests.  In hopes of getting a glimpse of the One Horned Rhinoceros, people are quickly taken to a couple of watch towers and are returned back in less than 2 hours. If you ever want to know how fast you can loose money, this is the place to visit. As usual, the RFO was on vacation when we decided to go and voice our complaints.

It’s not often that you get to speak about great men in the same context or with influences that are so similar, but I guess it needs a event as concrete as ‘death’ to bring them together.

This month will be remembered for the passing of two greats of the technology area, men who were pioneers and world changers in their own right.

Dennis Ritchie  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie

Probably, one of the greatest pioneers of technology in recent times. I don’t think any programmer, software professional exists, who has not heard of this man. For he was the one who gave us the language ‘C’ and of course the answer to life, the universe and everything ‘Unix’.

The language and Operating System he created, still serves as the basis for software development, system design and pretty much everything connected to computers in one way or the other.

His famous quotes about ‘C’ and ‘Unix’ sum it up well.

“UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity.”

“C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.”

Steve Jobs

I don’t think I need to write anything more, as enough has been said about this man.  So I will just quote the one thing that I have continued to adopt in my life.

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

#pragma once
Steve Jobs
Dennis Ritchie

“Don’t be Gama in the land of the Lama“.  This is one of the many signs that you will see should you be traveling in and around the Ladakh region. The word “Gama” meaning proud or pride, and is a sign board indicating that you need to watch the road instead of getting distracted by the beautiful landscape that surrounds you as you make your way through endless ravines and valleys with snow capped mountains as far as the eyes can see.

After spending 6 days doing the journey which included a road trip from Manali to Leh for 2 days and visiting the famous places in and around Leh, I can honestly say, I have but scratched the surface in terms of what this place has to offer in terms of culture, landscape and wildlife.

Its true what they say, Ladakh is truly “The Abode of the Gods..”

Just after crossing Rohtang Pass

Tanglang La (Second highest motorable road in the world)

Evening sky en route to Sarchu

Near Upshi

Pangong Tso

Maitreya Buddha | Diskit Monestary

Chukar Partridge

Himalayan Marmot

Last week, I was chatting with Amoghavarsha, and was checking to see if any accommodation was available at ARRS. As luck would have it, he informed me that there had been a cancellation for his workshop and that a space had opened up. So I quickly rearranged some other weekend plans and the next day, I was on a bus with 12 other people heading to the workshop in Agumbe.

This would be my second visit, and though the places seemed familiar, I was nevertheless humbled by the sheer amount of diverse wildlife that was available.  The last time I traveled, I had my work horse 55-250 IS zoom lens and had managed decent images from that, and now armed with a new 100mm f2.8 Macro lens, I was hoping to take my photography to another level.

We were also in the company of Gowri Shankar, who as most people in wildlife circles know is one of the India’s best herpetologists and an excellent source of knowledge about the rain forests.

The highlight of the trip was of the two King Cobra sightings that we had. One was a field rescue in nearby village and the other was tracking King Cobras in the wild as part of the workshop experience. Sadly I do not have any images of those as I was too caught up in the moment, and could not manage decent images. Some other friends of mine did manage images and so will link to their photos once I see them.

For now, here are a few images that I took during the trip. My target species for this trip were the Malabar Gliding Frog and the Malabar Pit Viper and so was happy to see and photograph them.

Cup Fungi

Closer look at the Cup Fungi

Cricket Frog (Fejervarya Kudremukhensis)

Malabar Pit Viper in the darkness of the night

Malabar Pit Viper (Day shot and close up)

Malabar Gliding Frog (Rhacophorus Malabaricus)

Bronze Back Tree Snake ( Dendrelaphis tristis )

Images from my annual pilgrimage to Kabini.

A herd of deer grazing along the river bank

Blue Bearded Bee Eater

Spotted Dove

Mother Elephant with Calf

Elephant Herd – None of them want to get photographed!

Gaur

Malabar Giant Squirrel

Osprey in the backwaters of Kabini

Been a while since I updated the blog. Haven’t been able to travel much due to various reasons. So I thought I should at least post an image ..

Shot this guy in Kabini. Met a whole pack of Wild Dogs and even witnessed them hunting wild boar piglets.

I usually take my camera out to photograph and document wildlife but sometimes I also like to try other forms of photography as well. Very recently, I was invited to attend a Bharatnatyam dance program in the heart of the city. One of my mom’s friend runs a Bharatnatyam dance school and they have a annual event where the students of their school perform.

I had never attended a dance event of this nature before and so was not sure how things would pan out. I however found it totally enjoyable, and something that I plan to photograph in years to come.  I spent a fair bit of time doing portraits of some of the dancers who were more than happy to pose. I had to tell them that I usually don’t get subjects which are willing to be photographed so easily.

The interesting thing that I found were the facial expressions that the dancers are able to come up with to depict various moods such as anger, sadness, happy, sarcasm etc.

I decided not to move about a lot during the event and managed to take fewer photos but that also was a nice experience and experimented with various settings and lens combinations.

I did not get a chance to setup a proper place with the correct amount of light, but managed with what I could. There are loads of photographs and processing them will take considerable amount of time, but it’s an event that helps develop a lot of skills such as working in varying and low light conditions and is definitely a fun thing to do.

Its been close to 3 years since I bought my Macbook and at the same time I decided to sell my old PC as well.  During its day, it was one of the most powerful computers I had especically for playing games as was the primary reason for keeping it with me. Since then, I have sort of been on a gaming break so to speak i.e. until now.

Very recently, I started playing on of my all time favorite games Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 with a few friends from office.  Its been 10 years since the launch of this game and it is by far the greatest RTS (Real Time Strategy) war game ever made (IMO). The game play and the videos are so captivating even now. Sadly, the original developer of the game, Westwood Studios is no more. They were closed down after EA acquired them. EA however don’t hold much regard for the game play or its loyal fans and the latest incarnation of the Command and Conquer game leaves much to be desired.

But as far as I am concerned, I think after 2 years its time to return to playing games and enjoy what I love to do. I have already spent the most of last weekend playing Red Alert2. Bought a game pad so I can go to my friend’s place to play FIFA. Its only a matter of time before I buy new PC as well.

Time to frag some baddies, score some goals, build an army and kill some aliens.

I had hardly touched my website since I had launched it. So a few months ago, I started to think about a new site and began slowly writing some code.
Today, finally, I feel its come to a stage where I can launch it. So here is presenting the new http://isharath.com
I also decided to move out of LJ to my own journal. LJ was great to start off with, but looks like these days there are a lot of bots and spammers out there trying to market to me and so I felt its time to move on to my own blog where I get more control. The new URL of the journal is http://isharath.com/journal

Yet another visit to Kabini, and even this time it was extremely fruitful. Though I didn’t see any big cats, I came back quite satisfied with a lot of excellent sightings and some good experiences.

On one of the mornings we were on the regular safari trail where we found this Monitor Lizard sitting peacefully in a small pool of water. Since being cold blooded, the lizard had not warmed up and so was very docile except for the movement of the eyes. We took our chance and manage to get some good photos before it got active and walked away.

In the evening, I decided to head out on the motor boat and try my luck. Our boat driver told us about the Shaheen Falcon and the Osprey that were sighted frequently these days. He even gave us a guarantee that we we WILL get to see the Shaheen falcon.  The Osprey was very shy and flew away from quite a distance, but not before I managed a few images. The shaheen falcon though obliged us for a longer time and was able to make "good" images even in some poor lighting conditions.

My record of sighting big cats at every visit to Kabini was broken this time, but  I was not too bothered with that small detail as I had got my money’s worth in this trip with the osprey and the shaheen falcon. 
I managed to make some images of the wild boar and the wild dogs that we frequently saw whenever we were out in the jungle.  I especially like the pan effect here because these guys don’t sit still and often run away at the first hint of disturbance. So this is how you see them quite often in the jungle.  

The wild dogs were extremely playful and didn’t have any such issues posing for us and we clicked away to our heart’s content. 

As I have always said, I am in love with Kabini. Regardless of whether I see any of the big cats or not, this is one place I will always keep visiting.