Galibore....

June 12, 2008

, , my friend from the NTP, Sandeep Chakrabarti and Abhisheka Gopal are all volunteers for Clean and Green, and we went to Kanakapura to prepare for the cleanup drive and the medical camp that C&G will be doing with Honeywell next Saturday. We covered a fair amount of work that would enable the smooth functioning of both the cleanup and the medical camp, in the process, still finding time to photograph some interesting things... Adarsh has just bought a Canon 40D and was always to be found with his pet to his eye...in fact, the camera should be called the Apple, because it's the apple of his eye! Let me start with the beauty of the sky and trees that the Kaveri reflects in herself....

Here's the scene at a small lake where we stopped to look at a GREY HERON:

Wonder what that arch was used for, once upon a time! Here are some of the wildflowers I sighted along the way: The cactus hedges were all in flower; I don't know if they qualify as "wild" flowers, but they are quite beautiful:

We also saw these wildflowers, which I don't know the id of:

What lovely scarlet flowers they are! And then we found that the entire area was covered by these blooms as well:

We headed for the Sangama to check on the concrete waste bins that we had installed in the tourist area, and saw the road ablaze with the GUL MOHAR blossoms (yes, yes, I know, these are exotic species which shouldn't have been brought to India and they upset the ecology..but they ARE beautiful at this time of year!)

Once we were done with work at Kanakapura and Alathahalli, we treated ourselves to a trip to Galibore....here's what the Kaveri looks like there:

Here's the JLR camp sign:

The Kaveri (I don't feel like spelling it Cauvery, somehow!) has such abstract beauty to offer us, as well:

One could see the kayakers from the camp paddling past (I had to rush to click them...by the time I came to the shore they were nearly past my range!)

The place was a haven for BUTTERFLIES, too...

There were beautiful shells strewn around the river bank:

Even the LIANA showed this spiral beauty:

And after a great lesson in angling (which will have a post to itself!) Sandeep's friend Balaji held up this fish scale in its translucency:

Fauna-wise, though, my photography, I am afraid, was NOT up to the mark; all our sightings were too quick, or in too low a light, to get good shots...or so I would like to claim. The only good shot I got was of this GARDEN LIZARD (Calotes versicolor) that was puffing up its neck and sunning itself on the cacti:

We twice sighted a JACKAL; once as we entered the Wildlife area and once as we were leaving. But the quickness with which the animal crossed the road didn't leave me any time to focus....

The shallows were full of these POND SKATES:

Let me close with this can't-fail shot of the LOTUS in the lake: