{"id":4744,"date":"2010-09-03T17:36:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T12:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=4744"},"modified":"2010-10-25T12:51:14","modified_gmt":"2010-10-25T07:21:14","slug":"images-nandi-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/images-nandi-hills.html","title":{"rendered":"Images: Nandi Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had featured one of my images from Nandi Hills a few days ago on paintedstork facebook page<\/a>. Browsing through the page this morning, I realized that many of my pictures from Nandi are scattered across several posts on my blog. Nandi Hills has many moods that vary with the season. It may look like a dull rocky hill with scrub forest and a few gardens during the first visit. At least that’s what I thought about it. But subsequent trips revealed many interesting faces of the hill. In the later visits I saw birds showing off their dazzling colours; I saw macaques cuddling their tiny and fragile babies that hugged their mothers tightly. I saw amazing play of clouds that brushed past the nearby hills; I saw clouds that enveloped the slopes revealing just an aberration jutting out from a sea of fluffy cotton balls. I saw sunsets that painted the sky red. And I know that this small stretch of hills just north of Bangalore have concealed a lot more than they have revealed me so far.<\/p>\n

\"blue<\/p>\n

On this particular day when I was at the top of the hill, I was looking forward to shoot some birds. I must have spent about half an hour chasing an uncooperative paradise flycatcher. I stood next to a tree contemplating if I should continue chasing the flycatcher and go somewhere else. That moment, this Blue Capped Rock Thrush<\/strong> flew into the tree and started singing. Although commonly seen, this is my only sighting of the bird till date.<\/p>\n

\"flowers<\/p>\n

A flower at the garden in front of the guest house at the top of the hill.<\/p>\n

\"monkeys<\/p>\n

This family of monkeys stared at us intently as we were driving down the hill, perhaps hoping to get something for breakfast.<\/p>\n

\"nandi<\/p>\n

I must have passed this view each time I drove up the hill, without stopping for a second look. But one winter at the break of dawn, I saw the clouds moving quickly across this hill with a thin cloud layer settling down on the rock surface. Here is the outcome of fifteen minutes of struggle with the camera.<\/p>\n

\"nandi<\/p>\n

On the same day when the above image of the hill and the clouds was taken, it looked like we were going to have a clear weather on the top. But just when we were approaching the eucalyptus grove a few hundred meters below the top, fog came in and enveloped the trees. We stopped and I took this picture immediately. Five minutes early or late and we would not have got to see something like this.<\/p>\n

\"nandi<\/p>\n

On another winter morning, we were late to arrive at the top of the hill and I was disappointed to see that there was no fog, which would have provided many photo-opportunities. As we slowly drove up the slope, I suddenly noticed this mild mist, which covered the earth below. I jumped out from the car and ran towards the slopes with excitement. This is the only picture (besides some variations of it) I shot that day.<\/p>\n

\"nandi<\/p>\n

We drove up to Nandi on an evening with no particular agenda. Although I had no plans to take any picture, I had still carried the camera with me. It was a colourful sunset that evening and I took a few quick pictures as the sun made his way down the horizon.<\/p>\n

\"skandagiri\"<\/p>\n

On one full moon day, a bunch of us photographer made the slow walk to the top of Skandagiri<\/a>, not far from Nandi. Although Skandagiri was a known name then, we were the only people who made the full-moon-day trek to the hill that day. The next morning as the sun came up, this was the spectacle we saw standing on the top: Nandi and surrounding hills floating in a sea of clouds. I am told that Skandagiri has gone through major changes since then. Although I don’t have confirmed reports, I have heard that it used to get crowded enough that there is hardly any free space at the top. Apparently they now even have tea-stalls up on the hill. I have also heard that forest department had prohibited people from climbing the hill for some time. I do not know if such an order still remains.<\/p>\n

\"tickels<\/p>\n

And to conclude with another bird photograph, here’s is a Tickell’s Blue Flycatcher<\/strong> from Nandi.<\/p>\n

Prints of the images are available. Request for prints<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had featured one of my images from Nandi Hills a few days ago on paintedstork facebook page. Browsing through the page this morning, I realized that many of my pictures from Nandi are scattered across several posts on my blog. Nandi Hills has many moods that vary with the season. It may look like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,23,112,1],"tags":[510,149,544],"class_list":["post-4744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bangalore","category-karnataka","category-photo-essay","category-uncategorized","tag-bangalore","tag-nandi-hills","tag-photo-essay"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-1ew","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4744"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5152,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions\/5152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}