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.

Megapixels Galore !

Megapixels Galore is my new photography blog. The blog is hosted on my almost defunct domain shande.in. The URL of the blog is photos.shande.in. The blog is my first endeavour using wordpress CMS. Suggestions and comments from any perspective are welcome.

In beginning for first few days, I will post all my best s captured in last 3-4 years. There will be one post per day.

Travelogues are Boring ?

Half of my posts are about travel/treks and as a result intentionally or unintentionally my blog has also been coined as a 'semi-travelogue'.

So what's the purpose of a travelogue ?
According to me in a travelogue the author has to take the reader through the journey experienced recently. Majority of my posts have been written with the same intention. Also, in some posts I have highlighted the important information in order to make job easy for the people directed by search engines.

Many of my trips have been interesting and with some exceptional incidences, automatically the corresponding travelogue posts have been interesting. In addition I mention, how exactly the trip/trek was planned and various funny stuffs associated with it.

But, if the trip itself is boring, then there are very less chances of making blog interesting. One of the regular reader of my blog gave a feedback for my Dodda Alada Mara(Big Banyan Tree) post that my posts have became monotonous and predictable. I had to gracefully accept her feedback. Actually I too was bored writing about the trip with same phrases and one liners.

In the next subsequent post, about trip to Maidenahalli Blackbuck Reserve Forest, instead of narrating about the trip in a chronological order, I chose present the experiences in somewhat unusual Q&A format. It turned out to be a pattern breaker and many of my readers complemented for the same.

Is there any other way of sharing experiences about a trip?

• Photoalbum: One of the usual way is by sharing a photoalbum with captions. It can be circulated among friends and relatives but people in need for the information(searching in google) won't have access to the information.


• Video: The other way is by composing a video about the trip. Radesh Bhat documented his recent Sarpass trek through a 9 minute 11 seconds youtube video with sliding photos and having A.R. Rehman's Roja music as background score. The video was good to see for intial 2-3 minutes but in later stages it became boring because of similar of kind of content. A crisper video would have been more worthwhile to watch.


• Poem: One of my friends, Sudhir aka ski blogged about his recent US Road Trip in a 20 line poem. One has to read between the lines to understand his feelings.

So what's your intention about a travelogue. Let me know your opinion through comments.

Some travelogues I follow regularly
- Arun Bhat: India Travel Blog.
- Sandeep Unnimadhavan: Trekkalogs.

BIAL visit

Being member of metblogs community I had been to the new Bengaluru International Airport(BIA) officially. The visit was conducted by communications team of BIAL for blogging communities of Bangalore to showcase the airport before the actual opening on May 11th.

In the visit our host showed the progress of construction work, which is almost complete and some unique features of airport. Even though the airport not a visually appealing one, but it looks like a international one - a kind of airport Bangalore deserves. I stumbled upon the natural lighting and pleasant interiors.

Read the more detailed report at Bangalore Metblogs - Visit to BIA.

Also have a look at my Flickr Photoset-BIA.

Oct 15: Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day, bloggers around the web will be posting about a single important issue on everyone’s mind - the environment.

The timing of the event has been perfect, it's recently announced that Nobel Peace Prize 2006 is awarded to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) and Al Gore. According to wikipedia the award is 'for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change'.

There are 'n+1' issues w.r.t environment. It won't be possible by an individual to discuss about all the issues. So Blog Action Day is the right initiative.

The issues I want to discuss is the attitude of the people, to be precise individuality of a person. Many people are not bothered to adopt to friendly practices, thinking that one person's practice won't make a big change. Well, millions think the same, resulting in serious threat to the environment.

Let's take the example of electric car. In India, Reva Electric Car was launched in 2001. How many did seriously thought of opting for this eco friendly car ?

Not only this, How many have taken initiative to stop usage of plastic/polythene bags ? To be frank not many of us.

BR Hills

There a few exceptions. Last year I had travelled to BR Hills (one of the top ten biodiversity hot spots in the world). There is a temple atop the hill. I observed that the usage of plastic bags is banned in the entire region. All the shopkeepers there handover the items in a cloth bag only.

At Kumaraswamy Temple, Bangalore

Temples in Bangalore are not far behind. In all the major temples of Bangalore temple management have put a notification requesting devotees to avoid plastic covers for pooja materials. I feel, this has to be replicated in others places also.

Recently Trekking/Hiking has become one of the option for weekend getaway. But it is costing our environment very much. At regular trekking routes one can witness dumps of plastic wastes. I have faced embarrassments many time. Some of friends carelessly drop plastic waste in spite of giving lectures several times. Nowadays, if my friends commit the same mistake, I pick up the waste and carry it myself, without giving lectures, a good Gandhigiri technique.

To conclude, in order to protect our environment one doesn't need to put effort which is as good as obtaining a Nobel Prize. It can be done by taking simple initiatives and putting what all the knowledge we obtained during schooldays into ACTION.