Metallica Metallica !!!

It was like good old days coming back again! It's been a while since I've been to any rock concert but this wasn't an opportunity I could have missed. The band that I've listened to since school days had to be experienced live in action.

After the Delhi incident, people were uncertain how things would turn out at Bangalore but I was sure that the crowd here would be well behaved and it indeed was. The show was well managed, the crowd was loud but not unruly, the set list was superb!

Metallica...I was there when you rocked Bangalore!


Image taken from: www.metallica.com

Gowri - The proud mother of Bandipur

My brother was in Bangalore last week to deliver all the Diwali goodies - Mum's special preparation of sweets. His plans weren't fixed early enough to get some bookings done for the weekend. I kept checking the JLR site almost every day and surprisingly a room showed available at Bandipur, perhaps because of some cancellation. So off we went to the jungle on Saturday, his first ever experience in the wild.

Almost an hour into the safari, there were the usual suspects that showed up as always barring the elephants who remained elusive in this trip. Then we hear some alarm calls and anxiety starts building up. One of the jeeps had gotten a glimpse of a tigress walking on the trail inside the thicket and were waiting on the other side of the road for her to cross. So we joined them too and parked the car by the road maintaining perfect silence. The alarm calls grew closer and now we could even hear some hustle bustle in the thicket on our right.

We patiently waited there with hopes of seeing the stripes, and she obliged! Out came a tigress known by the name "Gowri" and crossed the road in front of our jeep. She's one of the two females who've been raising a litter in the tourism zone at Bandipur. She's got 4 cubs who would be soon be turning 18 months and will be ready for claiming their own territory. Hopefully, they'll all be successful hunters too and help in adding a few more to their clan.

The sighting was less than a minute, but it made my day! Here's a shot that I could get with some reasonable eye contact with her.

Tech Specs:
Canon 7D + Canon 70-200 F4 L IS
Shot at 200mm, 1/250s, F4 and ISO 800

Golden Temple @ Kushalnagar

Surprisingly enough, in so many years of staying in Bangalore, we had never been to Coorg before. Last week was my first visit to Coorg and the Tibetan settlement at Kushalnagar was on the list of things to do.

The visit to the Namdroling monastery was a superb experience overall and it's the place you'd like to visit if Ladakh is too far for you. Having missed the trip to the mountains this year, the trip to Bylakuppe made up for atleast a fraction of the Ladakh experience.

The monastery has a huge golden Buddha statue, with Padmasambhava and Amitayus on either sides. The gold coated statues with the light falling through the ceiling quickly gets you to a calm and you could easily sit there for hours and keep staring at nothing.

Tech Specs:
Canon 7D + Canon 24-105 F4 L IS
Shot at 24mm, 1/400s, F4 and ISO 640