tomato umlaut's photostream

Walking along the Lava-Algarah road, on a bright winter's day I had to stop every now and then to click ferns unfurling. Why is it that these plants are spider magnets? Whenever I've photographed a fern I've always found a spider or a spider web on it.

We woke up before sunrise and watched the day break over the Kanchenjunga range. The blue of the mountains slowly turned pink as the earth rotated to face the sun. As the first rays of the sun struck the peaks, the pink turned to gold. This had just happened when this photo was taken. Minutes later the colour would bleach to the brilliant white one sees at all times on a clear day.

An afternoon off the Lava-Algarah road led us to beautiful places. As the Himalayas turned away from the sun, the long slanting light caught dry trees and set them alight.

It was a crisp and cold christmas day when we walked through a trail in the protected forest of the Neora valley, about 7000 feet above sea level. Walking through a forest is lovely: trees and vegetation abound, without the symmetries that we impose on them in gardens. I have never been able to photograph the feel of the wilderness. This time around I decided to try using gimp to make an hdr image. This came closer to what I think I saw: the blue skies seen through tangled trees, the undergrowth lush with foliage but cloaked in mysterious shadows, and in the distance, more than a day's climb away, the blue of the lower Himalayas.

A seeker went up a mountain to ask the wise old man what the secret to a long life was. The old man replied "Do not smoke, drink or overeat." Before the seeker could turn to go, the wise old man added "The secret to happiness is different, of course".