Czech Republic: A paradise

I can call it a dream. Czech Republic is beauty beyond expression. I cannot imagine a particular place in the whole of my Czech Republic experience that looked less beautiful. Lush greenery,  smoky mountains,  mirror-like lakes were doubling up the beauty. It felt like every element there, like the trees, mountains, lakes, were connected with one another and shared something very deep. And being there, felt like those elements absorbed us into the beautiful oneness and our hearts were following the rhythm of the lovely song of nature. The impressions are so strong that just closing the eyes are bringing back the rich colors, the scents, the wonderful memories I had there. Though these memories are from the past, they are overriding the present and still giving the feeling of oneness with the nature. Can I call  this a timeless experience? Ain't it wonderful? :)

Thanks to Landal, http://www.landal.com/gb-en/holiday-park/czech-republic/south-bohemia/marina-lipno (exact location where we stayed) for the wonderful accommodation in lovely apartments facing amazing landscapes, and for the great facilities like bikes, pools, sauna, boats, restaurants etc. And with amazing prices and offers. 

Also my warm regards to the lovely bunch of dearest friends who share similar preferences in enjoying nature rather than plan crazy schedules to cover more places and stuff. Looking forward to more such landal trips dear buddies. :)

One amazing experience that made my thoughts stronger on " the journey being more important than the destination ". More than where we went to, it was the lovely drives that made our trip all the more beautiful.

Landal houses viewed from the lake.

View from our balcony. The scene that was just dark grey got dramatic in a few minutes as soon as the non-stop rain finally stopped and the clouds drifted. The colors got brighter and brighter and the whole landscape looked HDRish. This pic is a normal capture and not an HDR.

Another lovely view from the balcony. We  spent our mornings just sitting in the balcony, sipping coffee, enjoy long breakfasts and watch the endless beauty of these smoky mountains.

A close up of the houses on the mountains.

 This was my first ever experiment with long exposure after buying the remote controller. The image was taken during late night when there was absolutely no light. It was pitch dark. The awesomeness of long exposure is that it makes things visible even during complete darkness. I was totally lost in the "wowness" after looking at this pic.. :) Thanks to Raghu and Shruti specially for accompanying me with my crazy experiments amidst freezing cold and waiting for very long duration to release shutter and a lot of trail and error in fixing the parameters in getting a good, low-noise pic.

Fun-group! :) 2 cars with large spaces would run out of space in carrying our luggage for our weekend trips that had mainly lots and lots of  food items. Enjoyed cooking and eating yummy food with you all.

A perfect day for a motor boat ride. Each one of us took turns in driving the motor boat and traversed along the lovely landscapes for almost half a day.

Raghu peeping out of the cabin :). Was fun making pics of all such creative poses of all of us.

We din't plan much for Czech Republic as the weather forecast showed us continuous rainfall all through the weekend. Nevertheless, the rain would stop once in a while when we would  go out and roam around. Once, we accidentally came across the trampoline close to our apartment. That turned out to be one of the best moments where we had a lot of fun.

A creative shot from a rare perspective capturing all smiles :) Love you all! 

Never ending night life in Las Vegas

View from the tallest tower, Stratosphere where we stayed as well. Thanks to buddy Sush for booking a lovely room in Stratosphere!

Beautiful buildings with lovely architecture..

Mandalay Bay

Two blocks that are tilted to display "V" shape.. Marvelous..

Mini Eiffel tower lit up beautifully in the middle of Las Vegas Strip..

Fun driving on the boulevard, also known as the Las Vegas strip.

Harley Davidson Cafe...

Interesting architecture..

Hard Rock Cafe

Crazy thrill ride on top of Stratosphere, which is supposedly the highest thrill ride in the world at a height of 1081 ft.

Casinos that  never take a break in Las Vegas.

I always thought the casinos would be filled with smart brainy guys. I was wrong and I was quite amazed at the way people (esp old people) sit day-in day-out at the slot machines and just keep pushing a button constantly and play games with zero usage of their brains. I tried my luck at some of these games, a few slot machines and roulette. Not too lucky with gambling but still got quite some which I used for a couple of more games. I also met an interesting person at the roulette counter during his break, who poured out how his life transformed from being a physics professor at a top class university to a roulette dealer whose wife and children also moved away from him. I wish life brings back luck in his life. No wonder this is a place with lots of rags-to-riches, riches-to-rags stories.

What nature lovers do in Las Vegas...!!

This is a travelogue of a weekend trip to  Las Vegas. Me and dear buddy Sush, after a long drive (around 6 hrs) from Scottsdale to Las Vegas, reached by around 12:30 AM. The drive was fun sharing the steering wheel for every 2 hrs, stopping over lovely places for our breaks. The GPS misled us in a roundabout that had 5 paths. Though we took the correct turn, the GPS made us take the wrong route and after a few mins we were shocked to see that we were heading back to our source. There were hardly any exists in that route and we lost close to an hr in getting the car back on track. Since we both love adventure, we laughed it off and continued our journey listening to good music, enjoying chatter and eating junk. We had packed lots of food (chapatis, curries, pulav along with lots of junk, fruits, juices) as we had a huge car that could fill it all. I guess our luggage weighed more than both of us put together ;) :P 

We checked in our hotel, had nice homemade food, we then roamed around the city till we fell asleep.

The next morning, we were not in a rush as the city life starts only in the night. So, we decided to have a nice long breakfast and started off to explore around the city. We checked the tourist places suggested by the GPS and we were surprised to see a place called "16 mile scenic drive in Red Rocks"  at around 25 miles distance and we thought of exploring it. When we arrived at Red Rocks, we were marveled by the natural beauty. We would stop the car every few meters and click pics to our heart's content. When we arrived at the entrance of the 16 mile drive, we got to know it costed us a few bucks and there were not many people there. We wondered if we really wanted to do the 16 mile as we thought what would be so special with those 16 miles as the place around was already so beautiful and we dint even know about its existence. We then thought, let’s give it a try. We got our maps and started off. After 2nd and 3rd spot in the trail, our fascination for Red Rocks started growing more and more. We learnt that the place was not just meant for sightseeing but for serious adventure guys. We spotted a lady running the whole 16 miles on rugged mountain terrain, a few mountain bikers, a couple of guys climbing rocks, a few more hiking. Well, it's not only meant for adventure. We also spotted a couple of scientists conducting experiments on one of the high altitude peaks. If we knew about this place earlier, we would have planned a whole day trek there. Nevertheless, the best part was that we could also trek without any special gear as the map showed us various spots that were marked for moderate hiking. What was planned as 30 min scenic drive took us half a day out there, we totally enjoyed the trek amidst lovely colorful canyons. 

Trail info for hikers.
1. http://www.redrockcanyonlv.org/lasvegas/hikes-trails/
2. http://www.redrockcanyonlv.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Red-Rock-Trail-Map.pdf

The entire 16 miles had such wonderfully carved canyons. View the full size image, zoom-in, you can spot a guy in yellow shirt and light blue jeans, standing on the peak.

That's our car parked in one of the view points of the 16 mile scenic drive.

Path to a simple trek.

Multi-colored rocks spotted while driving.

This was a moderate trek spot.

Sush enjoying the view through her cam lens.

You can spot some people walking down these rocks.

That's a not so well captured pic of car carrying scientific equipment. This was the spot where the scientists were setting up their experiment.

A fresh green tree amidst deserty Red Rock region. Did the heavy winds blew away the tree??!

Another view covering the tree and the landscape behind.

A closeup of a rock with various patterns on it.

An extreme closeup of a rock.. Doesn't this look like meat of some animal?

This one looks like brush strokes, ain't it?

Look at the guys climbing rocks. View the full size image and zoom-in, you can see the rope they both have tied to each other.

The next time in Las Vegas, we surely wanna trek more and climb those lovely rocks.

Speyer, Germany

Namaste

Location: Desert Botanical Garden, Scottsdale.

Looks like a female chipmunk carrying babies was too happy to show her tummy to us when we passed by her. In general the animals and birds in Scottsdale are not scared of human beings. I saw rabbits nibbling at peace, birds not perturbed by me when I went jogging around in the morning.

Good example of co-existence. Really appreciate the fellas here. They are truly caring for nature.

Frankfurt at night

Reflections of minds..




Sometimes a lamppost can make a skyscraper look smaller.. Its just a perspective..




Love locks..
I was quite amazed at the sight of love locks all over the railings of the bridge with couple names, love quotes, heart symbols and dates. Then I realized, lovers are crazily superstitious no matter which part of the world they are from!




I got a whole new perspective with my new super wide angle lens :) Just loving the wide coverage through my lens.
All the photos are taken with the 10-22 mm Canon lens mounted on Pramod's newly bought sophisticated tripod :)

Thanks Lars for taking us to such a wonderful place and a memorable night photography at Frankfurt city. Thanks Pramod for the joint photography! :)

Carnival season

This guy comes to me and opens a cute little box in front of my face. I thought I would get a chocolate; instead there is a cockroach inside! And there he goes with his expression "I scared you!".



Waiting for his turn.




From the 70's





The most funniest of the lot! The text on the car reads "NO WOMAN NO CRY" along with a pointing finger (with motor attached!) :P These guys had tied huge speakers to the car, which gave out extremely loud music.





They really looked like wild animals!




Some for you!




The streets were immediately cleaned and that was impressive.




Extremely cold weather in Germany had very little effect on the enthusiasm levels of the Carnival participants. It was wonderful to see the participation from a lot of people including young and old! I was one of the very few with camera there and I got a lot of attention. People posed for me and gave me goodies :)
A nice colorful treat amidst cold black and white days! Thanks to my colleagues Gerhard and his wife Christine for taking me to such a wonderful event.