Mesmerizing Mumbai

Back after a long pause, this time to document another visit to the Maximum City (Mumbai). As always a trip to Mumbai brings back some old memories that I have when I had first visited the city.  The beauty of this city among st the chaos always leaves me amazed and mesmerized.

Though I have been to Marie lines many times before, I never got a chance to spend some quality time gazing at the Sea and doing just nothing. One of the reasons for not being able to do this till now is that most of the times I will be in a hurry to catch a train to reach Vashi (where I used to stay). This time I was not in a hurry. I had booked a room in one of the hotel that is right in front of the sea.

Sea Green hotel is a compact little hotel situated right on the main Marine lines road and it commands an unmatched view of the Queen's Necklace. For about Rs.4800 per night its a perfect choice, considering the fact that other hotels in the surrounding area charge very high. Make sure you ask for a sea facing room. Its an amazing experience just sitting in the balcony and enjoying the view of one of the best places in Mumbai.

View from hotel's balcony

Nevertheless my trip started from Bandra terminus, from where I headed to hotel. If you are travelling to South Mumbai and are taking a cab or other private vehicle then do try to take the route via Bandra - Worli Sea link, which is marvelous piece of architecture and one of the first cable-stayed bridge to be constructed in open seas in India. You need to pay a toll tax of about Rs 120 for a car, but its worth paying for one time experience. If you of my kind who likes to take photographs then make sure you have your camera out. Though stoppage is not allowed on the Sea Link you can get some decent clicks from a moving car. This is what I got.

It was almost 12.30 PM, and I checked in the hotel. Sea Green Hotel does not have a dedicated restaurant but there are plenty of choices for restaurants in the surrounding area. I chose Shiv Sagar, which is serves decent vegetarian food or all kinds. After a filling lunch, I went back to hotel to take a nap. Later in the afternoon I took a cab to Gateway of India. One thing that I recommend doing here is to hop on to a boat ferry that takes tourists for a 30 minute joy ride on a short spin around the Gateway. The ride is really fun but if you are visiting during a weekend then do expect a long queue to get on to the ferry. Another thing to try here is to take a Tonga (horse) ride which again is fun. They charge somewhere between Rs.300 to Rs.600 based on how long the ride is. Again, don't forget to get your camera ready.

Horse Carriage ride

Later on I took a cab back to Charni road. There is a small sandy beach near Charni road called Chowpatty beach, where one can get an unobtrusive view of the Arabian Sea and if you are not too much of a hygiene freak then you can even get your feet wet and take a walk across the beach. Seeing the sun go down behind the city skyline is an experience in itself. I spent entire evening here taking photographs, playing with my daughter in the sea and later having variety of street food.

So, if you are a foodie and do not mind having food at open air stalls then Chawpatty is the place for you. You will find varity of food ranging from Pao-bhaji, pulaov, pizza, dosas and finally to top it all with Baraf ka Gola (Indian version of Ice candy ). Having golas make you refreshingly fresh and for me it also takes me right back to my child hood memoirs where we would run out of house on hearing the "Tring tring..." sound of the bottles of the "Golawala". Those were the days...I murmur with a sigh. Here are few photographs I took at Chowpaty.


Soon after the sun went down, I took a walk back to the hotel and about half an hour later it rained for almost 2 hours. I sat back in my hotel's balcony and enjoyed cool watery breeze blowing gently across my face. I just wanted to pause that moment for as long a possible.

No moment stays for long though, and neither did this. I had to catch an early morning train to Bangalore the next day so I to decided to hit the sack, but not before taking couple of photographs of the beautiful Queen's Necklace.

I was up early next morning and just before leaving back this lovely experience I took final few photographs. The early morning sight of Queen's Necklace is equally beautiful, just that there is more peace and serenity in the atmosphere as the traffic is very less.

Here is where my trip ends. Getting back to madness of work and responsibilities will be little easier after such a refreshing trip.

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Rainy evening at Nariman Point

14 Oct, 2011

Last year I had visited Mumbai with my family. One place that I usually never miss to visit when I am in Mumbai is the beautiful Nariman Point. I still remember those days when I joined a company in Mumbai some time around 2004. Invariably we used to spend evening during weekends at Marine Lines or Colaba. Watching the sun go down behind the city skyline was such a fulfilling experience. This time around I witnessed another angle of nature's beauty amongst the high rises of the Mumbai city. As soon as I reached Marine lines, I realized that there was a massive cover of rain clouds which seemed to engulf the city skyline. Never ever had I seen such massive formation of clouds. Luckily now a days I always carry my camera along, because of which I was able to capture this amazing phenomena. Just within few minutes after I got these shots, it started raining and it rained heavily for about 2 hours.

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Visit to Bannerghatta National Park

After a long period of hibernation, couple of week back I finally decided to head to some place during the weekend for a photo shoot, and this time it was Bannerghatta National park.

First something about Bannerghatta park. Bannerghatta National Park is situated 22 km south of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The journey to the park takes nearly one and a half hours from Bangalore. This hilly place is the home for one of the richest natural, zoological reserves. The zoological park makes this a major tourist attraction of Bangalore. (courtesy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannerghatta_National_Park)

I started off at round 7.30 AM as the plan was to reach the park at 9 AM i.e when the park opens, hoping that in the early period there will be less crowd which would allow me to take photos leisurely without much disturbance. Even before I left I had some shots in mind which I wanted to take. I especially wanted to take some really good shots of butterfly s in the Butterfly park. So as planed I reached the park at around 9 AM and as expected there were hardly any people around.

This time I was equipped with my 55-200mm lens and Sigma 150mm macro lens. With 55-200 mm lens attached to my camera I headed to the crocodile/cayman section of the zoo as I wanted to get some frame filling shots of crocs. Unfortunately it was very dull and cloudy day and the crocs had not yet come out from water for basking. So I moved on and was roaming around randomly.

Soon I came across the section where peacocks were kept. There were around 5 peacocks and same number of peahens and the peacocks were busy wooing their female counter parts. The male peacock was flaring out its feathers to get the female's attention, and boy, it was a wonderful sight. I took several horizontal and vertical shots to capture the beauty of our national bird. I spent around 20 minutes there and was really happy to get some good shots early on. Here are couple of them

Then I moved on to the reptiles section. The snakes were too far from reach of my lens to get a frame filling shot, however the Star Tortoise was within the reach so I took couple of shots. By this time I had also changed my lens to sigma 150mm macro as I had spotted lot of spiders around and wanted to take closeup shots of them. One of the spider (1st one) is called Orb Spider.

After roaming around for some time I spotted a small lizard/gecko on a rock. I am not sure about the name of this species. I think its a Rock Gecko. As the rock was high enough, I was able to get some eye level shots of the reptile. This is one of my favourite shot. I loved the way this reptile camouflaged with its surroundings. At a first glance it is difficult to distinguish it from the rock.

By this time the sun was high and my legs were getting tired. So I decided to move out of the park and head to the Butterfly Park with high hopes of taking some good shots. I had never shot butterflies before so did not know what to expect. On the way to butterfly park, I saw a small beautiful wild flower and couldn't resist to take its shot.

Once in the butterfly park, I got too exicted and started clicking every butterfly I saw. After a while I reviewed the images on my camera's LCD and was disappointed to find that not a single image was worth keeping. Some of the shots were bad in composition and many of them were not at all sharp. So I slowed down a bit, and from then onwards I concentrated on making a better composition and taking a sharp photos. I managed to get a few but still not to my liking.

By this time, I was damn tired and hungry so finally called it a day. I took the volvo bus to Majestic and then back home.

Though I managed to get some good shots, for me the trip was not as productive as I had thought. I took many shots but when reviewing them on my laptop I rejected most of them, majority because of lack of sharpness. One thing that I learned from this trip is that just taking more frames dosen't mean that you will get better shots. If each shot is taken with little bit of thought and concentration the success ratio is more. Another thing that I realized was taking macro/closeup shots require good amount of practice and skill, other wise most of the time you will find that the picture taken is not focused correctly and is not tack sharp.

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