J for Gin

The Giant

Again old memories came back to me when I visited Kolkata. Papa reminded me that we had gone to see a very old Banyan tree in the heat. And I wanted to re-visit. So off we went on a misson- to see the Great Banyan Tree. Once we paid for the tickets and went inside, we kept following the signboards, but we saw no sight of the tree. 15 min, 30 min, 1 hour, no Banyan Tree and no way out! We had no choice but to walk till the end of the Botanical Garden and there it was! What a sight! It looked like a garden with a 100 trees stuck together forming a big circle. And right behind it was another entry gate. I felt so foolish. Had we bought the tickets from Gate 2, the first thing we would have seen is this!

To Howrah

I had been to Calctta many years back when I was in school. What I still remember after so many years was the ferry ride we took from Howrah station. I had worn a yellow- ochre coloured dress and I was sulking coz I didnt like it :). It was 40 degrees C and we were all so dehydrated, that we bought tickets for the planetarium, despite there being a show in Bengali just to get some cool air and we slept through the show. This time, I wanted to enliven that memory again. So we took a ferry from Babughat this time up to the Howrah station. Was good fun. We could see the Old Bridge on one side, and the new one on the other. It's still the same.

the big brown canvas

8 am in the morning, I was taking a walk by the sea, collecting twigs for holding my kite, when I saw my foot prints on the sand and I thought of creating beach art, just out of the blue! By the time I came back, an hour later to put a price to each painting (a minimum of a 100 thousand dollars each ;)), the hungry waves came and gobbled them up!

Crabbie land

Spotted these patterns created by crabs during low tide only to watch it being washed out with the high tide. I wish these connected roads were water- proof so that crabs didn't have to spend their entire lifetime just making these over & over again!

S for Solitude

Was at Velas over the weekend. It's a small beach on the Konkan strip, on the Maharashtra- Goa route, about 5 hrs from Mumbai. It is known for riddle turtles and seagulls. What I loved most about the place was that it lived up to its name- Solitude! Here's a picture of the beach in the evening and in the morning.

 

Message in a bottle

Can you spot the crabbie?

I had to run almost half the beach just because this crabbie didn't want to be photographed. He was behaving as if he was being chased by the paparazzi!