Amboli in the Monsoon - Abode in the Clouds

The quietitude of Amboli in the monsoon is only disturbed by groups of nature lovers, mainly those looking for frogs and snakes to possibly photograph.  These groups have burgeoned but not to the point of being disturbing. I too had gone to see and  photograph the flora and fauna of Amboli, but I find that I was photographing the same flowers and animals repeatedly.  Besides, now I have grown more hydrophobic, I do not want to get wet in the rain.  The crowds drawn by the waterfalls are more intrusive, it seems that many people want to put their head under flowing water and the sellers with their kiosks are there to pander to every taste!!

A spiders web as we go on a night trail

Amboli in the monsoon is known for its herping, animals and flora. having been amidst this lush green environment four times earlier, on each trip I find a lot of change and now I have to contend with guides and fees and entrances to this and that.  Not many of us go there for the lesser-known sights in the rains. The sunsets amongst the clouds, a temple standing proud on the plateau and my personal favourite, the summer palace of the erstwhile Maharajas of Sawantwadi.

The summer residence of the Maharaja's of Sawantwadi.
Notice the basalt edges to the laterite construction. One of the stairs to the upper bedroom suites is visible. The laterite has moss
whereas the basalt does not have any.

Despite the fog and rain, on this trip I got a fleeting glimpse of the sunset amongst the lowering clouds, it hadn’t rained for a while but the sky was pregnant with rain.   Maybe the last four times I came here I was so intent on photographing the fauna that I did not look for the sun…

The sun sets at Amboli, 
See the majestic clouds and a watery sun

The temple atop the plateau.
Being on the top of gentle slopes, it is visible for great distances.

There is a plateau near Amboli and here the flora and fauna is plentiful and sometimes unique, perhaps that is why I and others give just a passing glance to the temple on top. 

The archway and bell at the entrance and the plateau in the background

As far as temples go, it is absolutely nondescript, a modern building used only on festivals I suspect.  What is unique is the location of this temple, visible from great distances, and it was a useful direction finder.

Branches beseeching heaven.

Everywhere in Amboli there is dense forest, very dense and since the laterite is close to the surface the trees are usually very stunted but the branches have interesting shapes. There is mostly old growth but some of it is new growth, the bushes at about waist height are where the snakes are.

Another view of the summer palace. Here one can clearly see that moss does not
grow on the basalt, making a neat mossy pattern on the façade of the building.

And now we come to my piece-de-resistance, the summer palace of the Maharajas of Sawantwadi, (I choose to call it a palace, it could be a mansion).  Sawantwadi, in the plains, is just an hour or so away from this lovely hill-station.

A lovely art-deco window.  It is intact because it
is sheltered from the violent monsoon. 

This is an art deco construction indicating that it was built in about early 1900’s.  The construction is mainly laterite covered in cement (or plaster?), with basalt on the outside edges and the portico.  Downstairs there is a foyer, sitting room, dining room and (guest?) bathroom, with servants’ quarters a discreet (bell call?) distance away. 

The embossed inscription above the main doorway

The main doorway opening onto the porch has “Jaishambhu” inscribed in Devnagari script. Upstairs there seem to be two bedroom suites, each with its own staircase from outside and one (grand?) staircase from inside. Replete with fireplaces and ornate decorations it was a cosy but stately home for the Maharajas.

The ruins of the state guest house/stables/servants quarters

 Some distance away seems to be the guest house, the stables, additional servant’s quarters. Sadly, the whole is in ruins and though I had been up to the first floor in the main house on earlier trips,  it is in such disrepair now that going up is very dangerous.

Like all things regal, it must have been really grand in its day, now but a sad legacy of what was.

Udiyari Band -- a little slice of paradise

 

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” - John Muir

View from Udiyari,  those mountains are Maiktoli, Nanda Devi, Nanda Khot

Udiyari Band is actually a transit point -- people going on to Munsiyari or elsewhere stop here for the night and move on in the morning. Little realising that this place has a lot to offer...

The sun rises on Maiktoli peak

To begin at the beginning.... I reached Udiyari Band (actually it is Bend) after a four hour drive from Binsar WLS (see my blog at Binsar WLS -- Traipsing Around the Mountains ).  It is a tiny fork in the road with one side going to Udiyari and the other going to Chaukori. 

A lady gets lassi from her hut.

 I stayed at Aagan Homestay which has good rooms and average food. The owner, Saurabh, is very helpful and assisted me a lot particularly in getting around. He took me on his bike and in his car to places where I wouldn't have dreamt of going.

Clouds over the mountains.  Every afternoon it would get cloudy
and by evening it be dark due to the clouds

I saw a very different view of the same Himalayan peaks, the main ones being Nanda Devi and Maiktoli. Though I could see the peaks from my room or the helipad (right next to the homestay), the view was much, much better from a open ground at Chaukori. But again I  am getting ahead of myself.

The leafless tree with a bird on it.  This was the view from my room
each morning and I could not get enough of it.

Sunrise was truly spectacular from the homestay, each day offering a different view. There was a leafless tree (dry?) on the other side of the helipad (the only homestay with a helipad) and the branches beseeched the heavens for a colourful sunrise.

Close-up of a waterfall.  These waterfalls were worth seeing and photographing.

Rainbow over Chaukori. Once we were treated to this colourful
display for awhile 
.

The sun rises

So I fell into my familiar routine of walk for three days and rest for one, and there were many places nearby to walk. My favourite walk was along the ridge and back, quiet, unsullied and untrammeled. I did try hiking from Chaukori to Udiyari Band once but it was along a steep hillside and I didn't have much fun so I did not do it again.

The entrance to Kotna Devi Mandir

Trishul at the Mandir

Just outside Chaukori was  the Jai Maa Kotna Devi  temple, which I am told is quite crowded of festival days, but today I was the only one going up.  There was no one there, absolutely no one, not even a Pujari (priest).  The views from here were spectacular as the quote goes 'The best view comes after the hardest climb.' 

Bakali viewed through the trees.  A leopard had just killed a goat nearby,
reminding me of our frailty.

The Kumaoni Lady of the Bakali.  As modernisation catches up in the hills
as it will, the old and new must exist together. 

I walked to many places, Hanging Rock which I overshot, walked back and found it very close to where I had started; Chaukori Village, Saurabh's shop in the Village, Musk Deer Farm, Sarla Ashram, the falls and a village with bakalis ( like a haveli, a mansion,) painted a vivid blue and white. And of course many, many walks along the ridge.

“Up in the mountains even our greatest cities, highways, and monuments to ourselves are nothing compared to the vast awesome beauty of a big mountain range.” - Unknown

Egypt - Wonder of the Ancient World

The Nile in Egypt
It is the source of all civilisations which were
 and are on the banks of the Nile.

Egypt is the Nile and the Nile is Egypt. It is hot, beautiful, dusty, wondrous, loud and silent, all at the same time. The flooding and ebb of the Nile determined the season, it determined life itself. The rest is but desert, in places the desert begins on the banks of the Nile and in others just a little distance away. 

The pyramids, pharaohs and the sphinx are what Egypt is famous for. 

There are millions, nay trillions, of pictures of Egypt on the web, so I shall put up a few more, some are unusual and some taken with my mobile, but all are adding to these trillions. Though Egypt is famous for the Pyramids, the Pharaohs interred in them and the huge Sphinx, there is much more to its history, being the pivot between Europe on one side and Africa on the other, but this is not a historical treatise. 

A guide rests in the shade of the blocks of the pyramids.
Each block of stone in the pyramids are tens of tons and quarried from afar. It is wondrous as to how the ancients moved such huge blocks of stone, slave labour, ramps,
flooding of the Nile and many other methods have all been discussed.

As Egypt is the Nile, so for about half the time we were there we did a Nile cruise on the river, awestruck by the temples or tombs alongside. Though I must admit that I was templed-out at the end of it. 

Belly dancer on the cruise...

 

... and a whirling dancer.  Every night, of the three we were on the cruise,
there was a different entertainment. We attended only on the first night
where these two were performing. Of the other two nights
 one was a galabaia night and the other was a disco night.

At Aswan we saw the Aswan High and Old dams, the vast Lake Nasser spanning two countries, the Temple of Philae, and a Nubian village. 

That's a Nubian Village, old and new, with the Aswan High dam in the background.

In the Nubian village we were hosted to tea (for a fee of course),
 in a typical house.  The walls were very colourful and this painting is of the matriarch 
in her younger days

We drove about five hours from Aswan to Abu Simbel also located on Lake Nasser. It is  huge, ornate and re-located with UNESCO help (we were to hear this often). Since it was one of the early temples, we were awestruck by its magnificence. 

Hieroglyphics and galabaia at Abu Simbel

Then it was three nights on the cruise and a blur of temples and tombs on the way, Kom-Ombo dedicated to the Nile Crocodile god Sobek, Edfu, Valley of Kings and the tomb of Hatshepsut are some of the things we saw. All a dutiful must-see. 

On the way back from Abu Simbel we stopped at a dhaba and we also saw this
puncture-wala, so reminiscent of back home.

Flying to Cairo we saw the two major museums, and its then I realized that there is much more to Egypt’s history.  We had a day to spare so we went to the Citadel which was very different to what we had seen until now. A must see for military history buffs. It was a huge palace till recently, now housing the military and police museums.  It also has a very ornate mosque inside it.

The Statue of Salahdin, one of the greatest warriors. A wise and just ruler,
he was also cruel when he brought the crusaders to their knees

The ornate roof of the mosque at the citadel.

The mosque is interesting as it is a more ornate copy of the Blue Mosque in Turkey and, unlike most mosques, has a mausoleum in it. 

A beautiful caste-iron window at the mosque

The Citadel has a clock tower which has an curious tale.  The clock in the tower was obtained from the French in exchange for a huge obelisk from one of the temples. Originally two obelisks were to be sent but the French found one too cumbersome to move, so dropped the idea of the second. The clock worked for one day and then stopped, prompting our guide to say “it must be a made in China clock.”

The clock tower at the Citadel

The sun sets on the Nile 

Egypt is unique and  the history of the country goes back about 5000 years, the gods and pharaohs in their thousands, must have seemed very real in their day but are now only a chimera of history.

Kenya- one of the greatest natural shows on earth

 “The eye never forgets what the heart has seen.” – African Proverb

The seemingly empty plain of the Masai Mara

My heart saw a tiny bit of Kenya and it was wonderful. I thought I would get safari-ed out, but each game drive opened new vistas for us, from little colourful birds to the big five. We saw four of the Big Five, keeping one for next time.

A large Cormorant complains that we are getting too close?

Lake Naivasha was but a curtain raiser for what was to come. A boat ride took us to an island where we saw many different types of waterbirds. 

The ubiquitious zebra, we saw this everywhere

We also saw zebras and wildebeest; little did we know then that they were plentiful everywhere and later we were wading through them to see other animals.

Lions resting on a tree. If one looks closely at the lioness on the right it seems
to have just come out of cub-hood as there are faint spots on its hindquarters.

This is where we saw lions on trees though they are poor tree climbers. Possibly one of their ancestors climbed and now all of them here go atop trees.

A veritable kaleidoscope of colour, behind these thousands of pink flamingos
there are many waterbirds, not without reason is it called the greatest bird show on earth

Lake Nakuru is said to be the greatest bird show on earth and it did not disappoint us.  The shores were filled with pink Lesser Flamingos with a few Greater ones thrown in; Great White Pelicans, Cormorants, the odd eagle and osprey and of course the ubiquitous and famous Lilac Breasted Roller. 

A perfect ambush site, this lion supervises the hunt 

... a warthog, crusty old fellow, later maybe he will make a good snack...

Very few animals reach old age, because they are prey to another animal before then. Animals of prey hunt for the very old, the infirm and very young which they try and cut out from the herd.  It is the law of the jungle which mandates survival of the fittest.

... while this lioness waits for prey

The endless plains interspersed by lone trees or greenery following water-courses seem empty, the grass varied from a close-cropped few inches to over five feet. Here were the hunters and the hunted going on in the primordial circle of life, factoring in the safari vehicles with nary an evolutionary hiccup.

This cheetah licks its lips in anticipation of the meal, which it didn't
get this time 

Many animals had off-spring, I photographed elephants and baboons with young, baby animals look so cute when they are small (anthropomorphic?) but grow up to be big animals that attack when threatened.  

A herd of matriarchs with their young of different ages and sizes...

... there were baboons everywhere and the very young took a ride on mama's 
back, slipping down to take a sip of milk or inspect something

A family of rhinos, are the three are bonding?

One afternoon we went to a Masai village, at a cost of course and one couldn't help but thinking that it was an act put on for tourists. The Masai were herdsmen and fierce warriors of the days gone by, killing a lion when they attained manhood. But now the government prohibits lion hunting and the Masai are as modern as you and I, donning traditional clothing when tourists visit their villages.

A Masai tribesman peeps into his house to see if the tourists have arrived...

 Was this what the Garden of Eden was before man trampled all over it? Probably the closest we will get to it.

“To witness that calm rhythm of life revives our worn souls and recaptures a feeling of belonging to the natural world. No one can return from the (Masai Mara) unchanged, tawny lions will forever prowl our memory and great herds throng our imagination.” – George Schaller