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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Lalbagh flower show (Aug 15)

Usually I visit the flower show during weekdays to avoid the the crowd that gathers up during weekends. However this time, I was busy with other stuff because of which I could not visit during the weekday. However I did not want to miss the flower show, so decided to head off during a weekend. As I expected the crowd was huge and I realized that it was almost impossible to take macro shots of the flowers. So I decided to shoot few candid shots of people around. Here are few shots that I liked during this exercise.

Security personal standing just outside of the glass house

Its always interesting to watch the kids. They hardly seem to be  interested in the flower show, but they are always up to some thing.

Mother taking photograph of kid and kid's father

Photo inside a photo :)

Thru the eye of cam

Poor kido, was hardly interested in getting photographed, but his father kept on asking him to give different poses.

Hawkers in lalbagh

End of the day.. heading home

Kids having fun time in the park

Ek main aur ek tu :)

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Visit to Somanathapura and Shivanasamudra

I wanted to document this trip long time back, but somehow was not finding enough time to do it. So here it is. Since the trip was arranged from my office we all gathered near our office and left in a mini bus at around 6.30 AM. Our first stop was for breakfast at Adigas on Mysore road. We had dosas, idli and all kind of south Indian dishes. We also parceled our lunch because none of the place that we were about to visit had a decent restaurant.

Next stop was Somanathapura temple. Somanathapura temple is one of the finest example of Hoysala architecture. The condition of the temple is also pretty good, though there was some repair work going on when we had visited. As we went around and saw the lovely architecture of the temple I took few photographs.

After spending about an hour and half at the temple, we moved on to 2nd destination, which was Talakad. Talakad is a small village situated at the bank of Kaveri river. There is also some history associated with this place. For us, it was all about having fun bathing in the river. I took a boat ride and also spent some time photographing my friends who played volleyball in river.

Sometime later we move on to the last destination, which was Shivanasamudra. By far this was the best and the most scenic place. I also managed to get few decent shots here.

Soon I followed my friends to the place which you see in the photo just above and this was when I slipped on a wet rock and fell in water. Luckily I managed to keep my hand out of the water because of which my camera was saved from getting dipped in water. Nevertheless it did get wet because of water that was splashed around when I fell. To prevent any short circuit I removed the battery and the camera remained out of action for rest of the trip. After a while we went to another water falls nearby called Gaganachukki. We had to climb down about 100 stairs to reach this lovely place, but the effort was worth it. Here we spend about half hour bathing under the water falls. It was really amazing experience, last time I remember I had such fun was about 5 years back when I had visited Khandala with my friends.

This was pretty much end of the trip. When returning back we stopped at Adigas for dinner and reached Bangalore at around 9 PM. Visiting so many places was pretty hectic for a one day trip, and place like Gaganachukki itself is such that one can spend entire day without getting bored.

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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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Lalbagh flower show January 2012

No, I had not been to Mars which would explain my long absence from the blog arena. Its just that these days I haven't got much opportunity to travel or visit any new places. However when 26th January was nearing, I was ready to go to Lalbagh to get few floral pictures. Looks like visiting Lalbagh during flower shows has now become a routine. I think I haven't missed a single flower show from the time I have been in Bangalore. The challenge from photography point of view is to get different shot and compositions from each visit. This is what I got this time during my visit to flower show.

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