Looking Back at 2022

2022 was a big leap for me with respect to video creation. The turning point was when I took Vistadome train journey from Udupi to Bangalore in January. During the journey, I met Vir Kotian, a multimedia professional from Mumbai. Within a span of a few hours, he inspired me to take a plunge for being a serious video creator.

 

Here's the quick edit which composed from best video shots from 2022 

My Resources:

The major change has been my primary shooting device - DJI Osmo Pocket 2, which I feel is most under rated device in current era. The brilliantly engineered device which is handy for family man like me as most of the time while traveling I end up shooting in only one hand while holding my younger one in another :)

Long time Back:

I have been on Youtube since 2006-07,  in fact my very first video posted in 2007 during my South Korea still get comments from people from 20 year old age group saying this video was uploaded when I was 2, 5 year old !!!. 

Feather in the cap:

The most viewed video on my channel has been Deepika Padukone's intro scene in Om Shanti Om. I had shot that using Canon S2 IS point-n-shot camera in a single screen theatre and had reluctantly uploaded in Youtube. In my dream's I would have never thought people would be appreciative about this video 15 years down the line. Infact, as per comments of people it seems Deepika Padukone herself had shared this on her twitter timeline.

 

It's always glad to see people giving you motivating comments like I was way ahead of time ! :)

Looking forward for exciting 2022:

And other major stepping stone in 2022 was launch of Gaalipata Youtube channel with my blogging buddy Raveesh. We have been making attempt at unique content through this venture and looking forward to create more interesting videos in 2023 !

Shande's experience on HOMP

Highway on my podcast (HOMP) was one of the by-product of COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, an initiative by pioneers of travel show - Rocky and Mayur along with show's director Abhinandan and cameraman Prashant. The podcast was go to channel for me during lockdown period. One of the interesting aspect of the podcast was encouraging listeners to share their personal experiences over email and which were read out in various episodes. 

Below is the email which I had shared with the team and which was read out in Diu/Daman episode.

---

Hi Abhinandan, Rocky, Mayur & Prashant,

This is Sandeep (nickname Shande). Basically a Kannadiga, born in Uttar Pradesh and now very much in Bengaluru !

Thanks a ton for the lovely stories and also behind the scene anecdotes. You have been my friends during this tough lockdown period esp. while doing mundane household chores and lonely strolls around my home.

I used to miss most of your HOMP episodes when it was aired around 2010  - mainly due to 2 hours one-way commute from office and on weekends, I used to be busy with activities related to my photography club (Bangalore Photowalk). 

I have been an avid traveler for the last 15 years. Apart from covering many places in my home state Karnataka, I have traveled across other states - Ladakh, Himachal, Sikkim, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttrakhand, Maharashtra, M.P., Punjab etc. and most recent was one to Gujarat with my family in Dec 2019. Your podcast has helped me to cherish all my personal moments and many things which I have missed out. Farali Kachori at Jamnagar looks to be a big miss for me ! wish I had your guidebooks/podcasts handy during my Gujarat trip :)

I am a vegetarian and not a very serious foodie. However, I would like to recall following moments

• Pav Bhaji at Supreme Corner, JM Road, Pune - it was during the demonetisation period and I had 3 hundred rupee notes in my pocket. One of which was utilized at this hotel :)
• Kotte Kadabu at Cafe Mysore, Mathunga, Mumbai
• Karela Pyaz + Butter Chapathi at Bhagat Tarachand, Vashi, Navi Mumbai
• Aloo Paratha+Chai at a roadside restaurant at Orchha.
• Veg Thukpa at a canteen next to Rumtek Monastery, Sikkim
• Gujarati Thali with Bajra roti at low-brow restaurant at Bachou (on the way to Bhuj, photograph below)
• A cup of cardamom tea at Singhik - North Sikkim with a magnificent view of Teestha River Valley
• Kachori - Chai at a tela in central Jaipur during early morning winters
• Jigarthanda at Besantnagar beach Chennai
• Gudbud at Diana Hotel, Udupi
• and Hot Idly, Dosas with chutney at any darshani in Bengaluru :) 

Gujarati Thali at Bachau, Gujarat

I have listed down multiple places mentioned during your podcast and wish I cover these places once the lock down period is over.

• Sadarji's hotel near Assembly house, Lucknow
• Sharma Dhabha, Jaipur
• Rajma Chawal at Pahalgam  
  
• Radha Paratha House, Porbandar
• Seva Cafe, Ahmedabad
• Lee's Kitchen, Uttarakhand
• Durga Mantap, Bhuvaneshwar
• Sharma Vaishno Dhaba - near Chel, Himachal 
  
• <many more>

And please let me know the coordinates of the Ghee Dosa place which you mentioned in the Karnataka podcast :) 

More than food, photography has been the primary motivation for me and below are a few photographs I would like to share with you all. You can see more at my blog (www.naanushande.com). I have not been active for the last 2 years. But your podcasts have given me a lot of kick to get back to writing. 

And finally thanks for adding me to your mailing list. I have been receiving updates from Episode 12 and not sure  how to access the previous ones ? Is it archived somewhere ? Also, similarly please see if there's a way to archive the lovely emails from fellow HOMPers which you read out during your episodes.

I am very much excited to see you guys back on the road and would be happy to contribute to HOMP initiatives in whatever possible way from my side.

Please buzz me when you are here in Bengaluru, I stay < 1 km from Vidyarthi Bhavan  :)

Cheers,

Sandeep/Shande.

A few photographs from my trips across India

Nubra Valley, Ladakh

Mt. Kanchenjunga as seen from Pelling, West Sikkim

Valley of Flowers, Uttarakhand

Cenotaphs at Orchha, MP

Adinath Temple, Khajaraho, MP

Khuri Sand Dunes, Jaisalmer

Puri Beach, Orissa

Gokarna Beach, Karnataka

Ibrahim Rouza, Bijapur, Karnataka

Landscape at Chikmagalur, Karnataka

Surviving the great lockdown !

There are zillions of updates, articles written about unprecedented thing which has happened for last couple of months due COVID-19 pandemic. When the half of humanity was staying at home and many people rekindled their hobbies which lost in usual corporate rat race. 

For me as well, there was lot of urge within to re-look at blogging and post the write-ups which have been cold storage for ages. Somehow, the breaking-the-jinx blog post remained on edge of the fence. Finally, on Sunday morning (Aug 9th), I woke-up abruptly at 5:45 am from a dream something related to blogging (can't remember exactly) and got in front laptop without excuses to jot down things I will be posting in near future. The result of that is one of the blog post which you reading now :) 

  

The thought was to post something constructive and not related to usual travel/photography stuff, but in contrast some stuff which made tough lockdown period bearable. 

Podcasts 

I had heard about podcast for long but never really gave a second thought what's it's really about and what will be there in it etc. Last year, I got introduced to it from wife Ramya's friend Naren at a lunch get together. Then, he had iterated that it's an ideal way for beating traffic stress and inturn do something constructive. I started listening from Attention Pliss podcast by one of the reknowned blogger and writer Arnab Ray and became a regular listener to this weekly podcast on current affairs. During this lockdown, I wanted something extra while doing mundane household chores and also during lonely walks around my home. To address this, I stumbled on a lovely podcast - Highway on my Podcast (HOMP) by pioneers of Travel Shows - Rocky and Mayur along with show's director Abhinandan and cameraman Prashant. These guys have been my friends during this tough lockdown period and their state-wise episodes has helped relive all my amusing travel memories for last 15 years. Another interesting in the podcast is they encourage the listeners to share their experiences thru email and interestingly my email was recently read out in Diu/Daman episode. More on podcasts and recommendations in a separate blog post. 

Ideal tool for Mopping 

At the onset of lockdown period, I took up responsibility of sweeping and mopping at home. Initially, I used to do the stuff daily and later when it became monotonous I used the technique of listening to podcast make the most of time used for household chores. But with a 3 old year at home, the floor of the house used to get dirty within matter of hours. It's always tedious to do usual jhadu, pohcha thru the day and to address this issue, I bought the dry and wet mop from Amazon (details below). Since then at any point of the day, I can ensure that the floor at my home is tidy ! Coming to ROI, the break-even for this product is already achieved thru half of our maid's monthly salary :) 

Extended Screen 

Work from Home can be stressful, esp. when you on critical path sharing your desktop screen with our colleagues for the whole day. Sharing is one part, but you will not be able to do any extra-curricular activity during micro-breaks. I was accustomed to work on split screen for a long time not only to have your "private space" during screen share sessions but also to improve your overall productivity when working individually. For this reason, I used to use my 32 inch TV whenever I used to occasionally work from home during pre-covid times. But somehow it didn't have the feel of the monitor which I used to have at office as the pixel density of a TV LED won't be made for viewing from a short distance. Later, during first week of walk March, when Covid made it's first strike in India there multiple speculations that we all may end-up WFH for long. Then, prudently or luckily rather before the lockdown period, I decided to order a BenQ monitor (details below) for seamless working experience at home. 

Vegetable Cutter 

When you are working from home, your lunch break-ups will be typically early around 1 pm and later around 4-5 pm there will be a craving to have some snacks. In office, you end up having snacky stuffs like bhel puri etc and emulating same stuff at home is not a cakewalk ! Somehow, during initial lockdown days, I squeezed some time from my work schedule to prepare churmuri, bhelpuri by cutting vegetables. Of all the tasks, cutting onions is one of critical task and takes lot of time. Of late, I hardly used to get time as cutting veggies as it takes around 20-30 minutes. Recently, I came across Butterfly's innovative non-electric vegetable cutter and ordered the same without any thoughts. Since then the vegetable cutting for churmuri is cut-short to less than 5 minutes !

So these are couple of things which has made my lockdown period manageable.  Please do share your thoughts and list !

A decade to Cherish !

It's been exactly 10 years since I have been sharing my experiences and thoughts on this platform. The journey has been amusing with  a lot of things happening in life w.r.t. personal and professional front and not to mention about endeavours related to travel and photography !

Screenshot of my first blog post

For last one month, I was contemplating on how to celebrate this accomplishment. Many thoughts ran through. Whether I should post cliched a blog-post with a birthday cake or post some statistics or do some retrospect. In the process, while going through my old archives I just had a glance at my very first post which was about a trip to Nandi Hills. Then an idea struck - why not visit Nandi Hills to celebrate the moment and also it would be good to share by comparing and contrasting the experience of visiting the same place 10 years back.

Key Observations:

• The routes to Nandi Hills from Bangalore has changed drastically.  In 2006, there wasn't an elevated expressway or expressways. The main reason can be attributed to the development of Bengaluru International Airport at Devanahalli. I guess in 2006, the construction of the airport was still in progress we hardly knew Bangalore beyond Hebbal flyover.
• With the shifting in epi-center of the city, it was disheartening to see multiple high rises around Hebbal flyover. In 2006, there were only two promiment structure around the flyover: One was Godrej apartment and other was 'clone of petronas tower' at a fair distance. Now the every inch of available land has been constructed or under constructed.
• There were no decent restaurants enroute to the destination. In 2006, we had breakfast at a hotel next to Devanahalli bus-stand and only other decent option was Mayura pine-top at the Nandi Hills. Now there are 'n' options to choose.
• There are several developments atop Nandi Hills as well, the sky decks at various corners of Nandi Hills is one of the significant addition.

The comparisons continued flashing back to memories of the trip 10 years back and to the real time experiences. More about my latest trip in my next post.

9 years !!!

9 years on with this blog ! Last one year has been challenging with only 3 posts :).With new job and new phase of life blogging has taken a back-seat. Looking forward to get things back on track in next one year with regular updates.

8 years !!!

It's been 8 years and can't believe this has come such a long way.. from only 50 pageviews in a month to the times when I was cherishing about 10,000 cumulative views .. nowadays this blog gets around 10,000 visitors in a month ! Way to go !..

 

The two most popular posts in recent times have been blog post on North Sikkim trip in which comments section has become bigger than post section and other one is about Majestic to Whitefield train journey. 

And yes, Aur acche posts aane waleh hein !

7 years !!!

It's been 7 years. All these years I used post and schedule anniversary post without fail. But because of hectic days with Bangalore 360 - photo carnival this post got a miss. Anyways, here's an obligatory post :)

It's 6 years !!!

Six years back i.e. on 25th June 2006, after a bike-trip to Nandi Hills, I decided to start this blog to post my experiences of the trip in public domain. Since then, it's been a wonderful journey of sharing and it has made to me try out interesting things in parallel to my day time commitments.

It's Five Years !

Can't believe for a moment that it's been five year since the time I started this blog.

In the last five years, the blog undergone gradual transformation. I have attempted to make the look and feel as contemporary as possible. Content-wise this blog is turning out to be a travel blog as I am getting inclined towards the contents which have longer shelf life. It's evident from analytic reports of the blog that travelogues have majority share in terms of page views.

Four Years !!

This blog is 4 years old now .. Personally it's been a wonderful journey as I have been using this space to share many exciting stuffs However, things have change tremendously since 2006, when blogging was considered to be a niche activity. Nowadays, with the rapid growth of internet in India every person has become a blogger in some sense for some or the other physic benefit.

3 years !!

naanushande.com is 3 years old now.

Following are popular posts for last one year

Favorites:-
-Going to office by BMTC: Experiences of commuting by BMTC. Sharing some amusing moments.
-Skiing at Bearstown resort: Maiden Skiing experience at Bearstown's resort in South Korea.
-Skandagiri Expedition: Welcoming new year atop Skandagiri betta.
-Harsha Bhogle - Career in these times: An inspiring speech from India's top cricket commentator.

Top contents statistically:-
-Rottikallu Homestay: A weekend getaway near Sakleshpur. Several adventurous activities like trekking, river-walk are conducted.
-Brand Equity Quiz - Finals: Experiences of the quiz show hosted by Derek O'Brien at Leela Kempinski, Mumbai.

Contents of previous blogging years which are still popular:-
-Photography Workshop - Kalyan Varma: Whenever Kalyan announces dates of his next workshop, this post sure to get a few hits.
-Kudremukh Homestay: Two and half year old post still getting sufficient hits.
-Sitanadi Rafting: A trip with Ctrl-Esc group.

New look and feel

For last few days I have been regularly tweaking my templates. I guess the regular visitors to my blog would have noticed it. The change was very much needed, since the blog was looking very mundane, as it had same colour scheme of basic blogger template. Every time after changing the colour combination, I used to ask for instant feedback from Raveesh. The immediate response used to be 'Chennagilla'.

After trying out all RGB colour combination, I decided to use some natural colours instead i.e. colours from my photographs. The present dark background is crop of a image of sunset snap. The natural gradient colour makes the look and feel different. Also in blog title section I have added a background panoramic image. The snap was taken during Kudremukh-Samse trip. After the change of image background, the major relief for me was when I got a thumbs up from Raveesh for the change.

Other than look and feel I have added a few features/changes in last few weeks.

• Expandable summaries: A good feature especially one can see condensed posts when browsing the archive section. But it's tedious because one has manually add span tag to all posts. As of now I added it to my important travel posts.
• Label cloud: makes the navigation easy since the number of categories have increased.
  
• Related posts by categories after end of each post.
• Blog logo: comes in header tab of the browser.
• Images and borders for blockquotes.

Feedback and suggestions for changes are welcome.

An Aside: August 2008 has been the best month w.r.t to statistics. I posted 15 post, highest so far in a month and got more than 4000 pageviews. The major hits were for Rottikallu Homestay post and review of Kalyan Varma's workshop.

20000 !!!

June 25th 2006: The beginning!
Jan 8th 2008: 10000 mark!
July 5th 2008: 20000 mark!

For first 10K visitors it took around one and half years, but the second 10K visitors it took less then six months ! Thankyou for everyone who has visited my blog.

2 years of thoughts sharing !

Today is second anniversary of this blog. It's been exactly two years since the time I started blogging. As mentioned in the first anniversary post I had to come across many mental hurdles. But after series of positive triggers the thoughts sharing started and the rest is history.



Major milestones/highlights in last one year.
- Moved blog to custom domain: when blogspot domain got blocked in my office, it motivated(forced) me go for a custom domain. The movement took almost 2 months because many technical issues with the vendour.
- Crossed 10K visitor mark: Seriously I never really imagined that the visitor count will reach 5 figure mark one day. Now the blog is almost at the threshold of crossing 20K mark.
- 100th post: Scored a century w.r.t number of posts.

Blogging Peers:
Raveesh has been my best blogger buddy. We two started blogging almost at the same time and have been mutually commenting and complementing each other's posts in the blog. As a result we two have grown a lot as bloggers.
There are many other blogging friends (find their names in the side panel), but majority of them of either gone into long hibernation or may not be in a position to share.

Blogging break:
The break won't be intentional but sometimes it becomes inevitable. It happened during my Paris biz trip and a few weeks before that. Due to lack of time thoughts remained thoughts and didn't get converted into blog posts. I still want to share them but before that I have to resolve to-post-or-not-to-post issue.

Blogging at others places:
I continued my occasional blogging at Bangalore Metblogs. It has been the right place for me to share the thoughts which I want to be shared at a bigger platform. Being a metblogger I got a chance to visit the brand new Bengaluru International Airport, months before the actual inauguration.
The other place (blogging venture) was unofficial-IPL-blog with Aditya, Raveesh and Paras. It was a perfect place for me to share thoughts about cricket's biggest carvinal.

Comments and Novelty factor:
In first year I got many comments, but in the second year eventhough the traffic increased many folds the number of comments decreased. Is it because of novelty factor that I got more comments in 1st year or my posts have become monotonous or people have become too busy to comment or people don't want to put that the same mundane comments ?

In last one year, totally I have posted 71 posts. Of which my favorites have been.
- Andaman trip series
- Paris trip series
- Visa extension saga
- Jenukallu Gudda Hike.

Statistically following are the top posts
- Gaalipata: one step forward, two steps back.
- Sitanadi Rafting.
- Landmark quiz.
- Shravabelagola Trip.

Anniversary special posts
I had some interesting stuffs to share and discuss but was looking for an occasion to share it. Finally decided to post them as anniversary special posts which will be following this post. Have a look at them too.

100th post: B2B from Paris !!!

Hurray !!! This is 100th post of this blog. One more milestone achieved.

Many of friends were asking me why there were no updates for a week on this blog. Well, I wanted to post something special for this post. I was on a business trip to Paris and was looking forward to post about the same for the 100th post with a photograph. I didn't had proper resources in Paris to upload the photograph so decided to publish the post when I am back to Bangalore(B2B).

Here is one of the snaps of symbol of Paris i.e. Eiffel Tower.



From next post onwards, I will be posting experiences of the trip. Things about Paris documented very well in the internet, so will keep my posts as precise as possible.

Breakthru month: Jan 2008

January 2008 was a breakthrough month for my blog, as the number of visitors increased two fold. Not only this there were other milestone achieved such as the visitor count crossed the magic figure of 10000 and totally there were 12 posts.

Let’s have a look at the metrics in comparison to previous best month March 2007.

[Courtesy: Google Analytics]

There is 111.86% increase in Pageviews and average time on site has also increased. There is improvement in bounce rate with a decrement of 5 percent.

The major reason for the exponential rise can attributed to my six post series about Andaman trip and also my review about the most awaited Kannada movie Gaalipata.

The below table gives the breakup of top 4 keywords by which visitors were directed to my blog from google.

Keywords Containing	Visits	Content
Gaalipata	78	Gaalipata : One step forward, two steps back
Andaman	36	Andaman Trip
Kudremukh	22	Kudremukh Home Stay
Lalbagh	21	Lalbagh Flower Show

The report also indicates that people searching for Lalbagh flower show were directed to my blog and my experiences of Kudremukh Home stay(in Nov 2006) is still getting hits.

Thanks to all the visitors, regular readers and also to Google for Blogger, Search and Analytics.

10000 visitors !!!

Sunil Gavaskar on March 7 1987, Sachin Tendulkar on March 31 2001 and BSE Sensex on Feb 7 2006 have something in common. Yes you guessed it right, it is crossing of magical figure 10000 in some respect.

Similarly, today my blog has crossed the magical figure of 10000 visitors. Hurray !!!

Thanks to all and keep visiting.

naanushande.com blocked in my office !!!

Yesterday, when I tried to access my blog in my company. The websense threw this error.

Internet use policy restricts access to this web page at this time.

Reason: Block URLs of type Humor/Jokes
URL: http://www.naanushande.com/

Well, a few months back blogspot domain was blocked in our company. Therefore I moved to custom domain www.naanushande.com, so that my blog is accessible in my company.

But two weeks back all of sudden 'blogspot block' was revoked. Seems IT people started targeting blogs on custom domain and my blog is one of the victims.

Only thing I can do is consider this as an achievement since IT people of my company think that my colleagues waste their precious time reading my blog :)

Welcome to www.naanushande.com

Finally I managed to move my blog to custom domain www.naanushande.com

The urge to move the blog custom domain started when the blogspot domain was blocked in our office blocked. So, 45 days back I registered naanshande.com domain with Webcom Systems. A slight miscommunication between myself and vendor delayed the transition. I took help of Aditya PK to trouble shoot the issues. Yesterday I was able to do right configuration of CNAME record using this link. I didn't expected that a single dot would be so crucial. Anyway, All's Well That Ends Well.

Couple of points to be noted:

If you have subscribed to RSS feeds, then no need to modify the feed settings. I had made the feed independent of 'domain name' long back. FYI, the feedburner link for RSS feeds is http://feeds.feedburner.com/naanushande .

If you access my blog using naanushande.blogspot.com, you will be automatically redirected to naanushande.com

In case of any issues, please let me know immediately.

shande.in

I had created shande.in domain 3-4 months back and had a plan of shifting this blog there. But later I found out that shifting blog is not so easy. Therefore I continued blogging here itself and didn't announced the creation of my own domain.

Last week in my office, IT people blocked blogspot domain also. This made me too give another try blogging at my own domain. I created a test blog, but discovered that template customization feature of blogger is not available for blogs hosted in own domain. Finally I ended up creating a new blog by name My Feeds. In this I will be posting references to blogs and links which I find interesting for that particular day.

Please have a look at shande.in where you can find my hane-bharas.
- orkut profile.
- personal blog.
- photo blog.
- my feeds.

For the time being, this blog will continue as my personal and travel blog.