My Pictures

Coming Next...

2006-04-26T22:19:00.000+08:00

Sorry, I was lazy all these days to upload pics. Its high time that I keep this activity going on...

Upcoming...
1. Harbin Trip --- Tried living in temperatures comparable to Antartica.... Here it is.
2. Memoirs of Kingsville... Graduation Day.
3. Around Beijing - part II

Around Beijing - Part - I (Fragrant Hills)

2006-04-26T12:11:00.000+08:00

Around Beijing, Fragrant Hills

Xi`an Trip - Part III

2006-04-02T20:53:00.000+08:00

Xi`an Trip - Part III

Test updates to follow in next couple of days... :-)

Xi`an Trip - Part II

2006-03-16T07:49:00.000+08:00

Xi`an Trip - Day 2
Travel to Hua Shan (Mountains)

Place: Railway Station, Xi`an. In the early morning, 5 of us headed towards HuaShan (Mountains). It was very foggy day and wasn't suitable for visiting the mountains. But we were determined to visit this place. We had very less time and trip was very well planned. Sudarsan and Kapil somehow communicated at ticket counter and got us tickets for this place. This place is a bit far from Xian City. This time Train experience was wonderful, as it wasn't the soft sleeper.

We met her in train. She is very cute and can count numbers and speaks pretty good. When one of us asked her name, she was bit confused. I think it was our tone. I am surprised, how they can identify the tone of a word.

Place: HuaShan moutains, ShanXi Province. On our way to cable car station. It was wonderful experience. All the roads are so slippery with frozen snow on road.

Start of Snow fight... Devan (Right most) was bit angry after snow fight. Someone threw snow on his head and in minutes it was all wet. :-) But It was fun playing in snow.

Place: Top of Huashan mountains. That's me, Fully prepared for my hiking. We did mange to walk on mountains.

Place: HuaShan mountains. We are climbing mountain. It one side there are huge rocks and other side there is a kilometer long ditch... Since the day was foggy, we couldn't actually feel how deep it would be. But for sure I will get the pictures from my next trip. If it was not foggy that day, I really wouldn't have dared to walk the way I did.

Place: Huashan mountains. I think we were on some huge rock on the edge of mountains. We couldnt see anything below from this point. The view was just like, one would see earth from clouds during flight journey.

Place: HuaShan mountains. The above pictures are just few to share in my blog. There is nothing I could really capture in camera.

Place: HuaShan mountains. Cable car getting lost in dense foggy. Its 10 minutes ride (one way). While going down we could really see how some part of cable and it looked almost vertical.

Place: HuaShan mountains. On our way back. We spend around 4 hours walking on mountain and came back. Next trip which I plan would involve a clear check on weather. My roommate went last month and his photos are jaw-dropping. I would like to add few here but in next blog.

Place: HuaShan mountains. Some wrong settings on my S1 IS fetched me this. I didnt notice this until I was browsing thru my collection for this post.

This mountain hiking was one of the wonderful thing in this trip. We had fun and wonderful time. I would like to visit this place with right person. :-)

Xi`an Trip - Part I

2006-03-04T08:44:00.000+08:00

Xi`an Trip - Day 1

Place: Train z19, Non stop from Beijing to Xi`an. Subset of group in one cabin. Devan, Puneet, Sheela (Right), Jilu, Sudarsan and our Chinese friend of the day.

Many Trains in China are Non-Stop running between major cities. Specially the soft sleeper trains. These trains are faster, cleaner and very comfortable. In Each coach, there are 9 cabins and each cabin has 4 soft beds with a LCD TV and Headphones. Apart from this there are many other things provided. The interiors of train look very royal. Cost of tickets, affordable for me. But pretty costly.

Xi`an is about 1200Km far from Beijing. The Z19 train covered it in 1o hours. :-) During our journey, We played cards, watched movie on my laptop and also some talks... It was memorable journey.

Place: Terracotta warrior museum, Xi`an. The Green Ship is completely made of Jade. :-) It stands 5 - 6ft tall. The Ship was a show piece in one of the Shops, where only Jade Jewelry are sold. The sellers explained us difference between real Jade and Fake Jade. Its real hard to distinguish between real and fake one until we know the methods.
Place: Mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Xi`an, Ashwin and Jilu dressed in traditional Chinese Dress.

Its is said that, each face of this pottery art soliders looks different. For my own interests, I have captured more than 50 pictures. When I came to China, to me everybody look alike, same face. But once living among these people, I could dentify the different people. Its fun to be here in China until one is bachelor.

Place: Terra-cotta Pits, Xi`an. Emperor Qin's Terra-cotta pits are the largest attendant pits located 1.5 Km east of Emperor QinShihuang's Mausoleum, Symbolizing the main defending force that guarded the capital before the emperor died. The pits were never mentioned in the historical records until pit 1 wasa discovered in March, 1974 by local farmers while drilling a well. Then Archaeolofists began the explorations and excavations. On October 1st, Emperor Qin's Terra-cotta warriors and horses museum was opened to the public.

Pit 1, the largest pit is a subterranean earth-and -wood structure. It measures 230 mtes long from east to west and 62 meteres wide from north to south. Its assumed that more tan 6,00 pottery warriors and horses were unearthed from this pit. All the statues are big in life-size and ezquisitely made, representing high technology in chinese sculptural history. They are reputed as the "Eighth wonder of the world". The Excavation of the terra-cotta warriors and horses provides extremely valuable data for research of chinese ancient politics, military affrairs, science and arts.

First attempt of Xi`an Trip

2006-03-03T23:05:00.000+08:00

Attempt of Xi`an trip .... A wait in Airport

Place: Beijing Airport. People waiting in Terminal. Flights were delayed indefinitely due to dense fog. It wasn't our day. We made it second time by train Journey, but Nitin and Mukul couldn't make it. Sorry for them. But Xi`an is such a beautiful place.

Temple of Heaven

2006-03-03T22:08:00.000+08:00

Temple of Heaven

Place: TAXI (TAXZI, As called my Nitin). Outside our apartment. Mukul, Leader of the day, planning as where to go and locating the place in Beijing map. Thanks to Sudarsan, who always carry one to help us locate tourist place. :-)
About: The Temple of heaven was the place where the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties would worship heaven and pray for bumper crops. Built first in 1420 AD A masterpiece of the Ming and Qing Architectural art and a precious sample of China's Ancient Architecture. The Temple of Heaven is the last architectural group for worshipping heaven in the world.Temple of Heaven, Beijing. Around this structure there is echo wall (circular). The wall is constructed in such a way that sound travel along the wall and can be heard at other End. Its very clear.

Mukul sleeping peacefully. Successfully executed the plan of visiting Temple of Heaven. He is still...

Temperature on that day was just below zero.

with, whom I call my friends - part II

2006-01-16T16:27:00.000+08:00

Place: Great wall, China. With friends who made the last hurdle.
Place: Tian An men, Beijing. With my friends outside forbidden city.
Place: Mount bonell, Austin, TX. My cousin and my classmates (They are my friends :-))
Place: Naveen's home, Austin, TX. Ocassion, Naveen's birthday. Naveen, one guy of the friend who was there to help me out in Austin.
Place: Dallas, TX. From a party for buying a new black ford mustang.
Place: SeaWorld, San Antonio, TX. First fun trip of its kind with friends from Houston and Austin.
Place: New Jersey, USA. My last trip in USA with friends who studied with me during graduation.

I haven't talked to many individuals here, but they somehow became part of this memorable moment.

Keep in touch.

With, whom I call my "FRIENDS"

2006-01-14T07:16:00.000+08:00

Place: Kingsville, Corpus Chiristie, TX. My graduation day, hmm... it took me 6 hours to add them to my list of friends...
Place: Los Angeles, California. Was trying to set timer and run to my friends... succeed 3rd time.
Place: Hover Dam, Las Vegas. First trip with one my lunch group friend.
Place: Indianapolis, USA. Two Ferrari fans, it was strange that we spent only 15 minutes together. I remember even the conversation I had... I dont about him because he was holding his 2rd beer.

Place: Hollywood studios, Los Angeles. Sreedhara (Right-most) was very sentimental when this photo was shot. He actually forced other friends to take this shot in 3 different camera.

These are few memorable moments in my life. Its very difficult for me to forget these...

Miss you all...

Fragrant Hills and Beijing Zoo...

2006-01-05T07:45:00.000+08:00

Pandas are main attraction in Beijing Zoo... Apart from these pandas, I didnt find anything interesting. Temperature was subzero this day in Beijing. We could barely walk...

Memoirs of Galveston trip

2006-01-04T11:11:00.000+08:00

Galveston is a small Island near Houston, Texas. Here its not Tsunami which causes destruction, but hurricanes which forms in Altantic ocean.

Was he praying for all those souls or was he experiencing the feeling of being dragged into water by waves. This guy was standing there more than 15 minutes. I shot my first set of photos and he was there all the time looking at sea.

These pictures were taken day after the Tsunami hit in coastal regions of Indian Ocean.

Great Wall (Mutianyu Section) Part 3

2005-12-10T11:39:00.000+08:00

Great Wall (Mutianyu Northern Section)
Its a prettry long walk with thousands of stairs to climb ... my knees were shouting out loud by the time i reached the northern part of the great wall. It took about 2 hours and i guess i was the slowest ... it was great fun walking though...
Half way thru the Great wall.
northern section of Mutianyu uphill walk. you can see people walking all the way up and thats nothing compared to final hurdle.
How many will make it to this section. I dont know but in our group of 14, only 7 walked till this point and beyond.
Final hurdle of some 500 steps... pretty difficult to climb... :-)) and the top most point is the northern section of Mutianyu. beyond this point its only risky to climb as its not constructed and its more steep.
People who made it... who actually completed the walk of Mutianyu section of The Great Wall. I closed my eyes. :-)
Its me again, and behind, a very beautiful view of The Great wall. :-)) Almost everybody took photo at this spot.
View of southern section of Mutianyu and we going back to center.... when we reached slideway, I was exicted to go down on vehicle which slides ...something like water slider. I have captured that in video... its very beautiful 5 minutes of video, but its too huge to upload.
Scenic view from Northern Gate.

It short, Walking on the Great Wall is amazing experience. Its painful and for me it was brutal, I missed falling from stairs 3 times. twice while climbing final hurdle. But its worth and I feel really proud that I have walked all the way up till this point.
:-))

Great Wall (Mutianyu Section) Part 2

2005-12-05T09:40:00.000+08:00

Great Wall (Mutianyu Southern Section)
This is the End of Southern section of Mutianyu. The Gate seen is the picture is point till where visitors are allowed. Beyond this place there is no proper construction, but visitors still manage to reach next Gate walking thru all the tall dry grasses... View from this point is amazing... :-))
This is regular Stitch, having a beautiful scene of most of the Northern Great wall section in Mutianyu.
View from one of the Gate or barrack.

This is one of my best photos. I didnt expect it to so good when shot. Enjoy the beautiful scenes from Great wall.

Great Wall (Mutianyu Section) Part 1

2005-11-28T17:50:00.000+08:00

Mutianyu section of the Great wall

Mutianyu is 20 km to the northwest of Huairou county and is situated where vegetation is luxurious and over 90% of the land is covered with grass and forests. This section of the Great wall is in good condition and was rebuilt in 1569 (Ming Dynasty were rulers of this land then).

A comfortable and safe cableway has been built to whisk tourists up and down the Great wall.

View from Cable car ... Half way up.. :-) I was scared as this was my first two seater cable car Ride.

Beautiful view of Mutianyu section of Great wall... One can walk till the farthest point of the Great wall seen in picture just above...:-)) I am proud to say that I did walking twice, from point where this photo has been shot till the farthest point.
Southern tip of Mutianyu section of the Great wall. Its a very nice place ... Wish there were clouds that day. The people in the picture are my friends.

Let me introduce: (Standing L-R) Sudarsan, Suneel (that's me), Devan, Kamal, Kapil, Lucas, Mukul and Debasish (my roommate). (sitting L-R) Sheela, Meg and Nitin.

Forbidden City Part 3 - Jewelry and Paintings

2005-11-27T18:05:00.000+08:00

Place: Forbidden City, Beijing, China. I don't have much of information about these Exhibits or painting. I will update the information as when I get to know more about these things from my Chinese friends. :-))

Forbidden City part 2

2005-11-26T12:02:00.000+08:00

Forbidden City (Part 2)

This is the wall outside QianQing Gate Square. The design in centre of looks fabulous. I have shot that alone.
Jindian (The golden hall) It is also called JiangShan Seji Jindain (the Golden Hall of the land and country)
Corner Tower. There is one in each corner of the forbidden city. The structure is unique and the form beautiful. It was said to be tower with nine roof beams, 18 pillars and 72 ridge poles made by immortals. The corner tower in the Forbidden City and the Wanchun pavilion in Jingshang Hill. This is view of Qianqing Gate square and right side view of forbidden City.
Qianqing Hall. It is the principal building in the three rear halls, beautifully decorated and luxurious. The three rear halls is behind the inner court and emperor used to handle day - to day work and lived with Queen and concubines.

Place: Forbidden City, Beijing, China.

Forbidden City Part 1

2005-11-24T08:16:00.000+08:00

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City, which is called the palace museum now, occupies the central part of Beijing municipality ad was the imperial palace of Ming and Qing dynasties. Its construction began in 1406, so it has a history of nearly 600 years. Over the years after its completion, 24 emperors ruled the whole country from here for nearly 500 years.

With many halls and pavilions, marble railings and steps, red walls and yellow tiles, the Forbidden city looks resplendent and magnificent. It occupies an area of over 720,000 sq mts with 9,000 bays of halls and rooms. The construction area amounts to about 150,000 sq mts and the surrounding walls are 10 mts high and 2428 mts long wih 4 splendid corner towers standing separately at four corners of the City. A moat, which is 52 mts wide and 3800 mts long surrounds outside the walls. Thus the city was made a strongly fortified castle.

Tian An Men (The gate of heavenly peace). It is the main entrance of imperial city in both Ming and Qing dynasties. Where the emperor promulgated his edict. Tian An Men is tall and solemn and its rostrum looks majestic with its upturned caves, carved beams and painted rafters, and yellow tiles and red walls. It is now the Symbol of new China.

Tai he Hall (the emperor's audience hall). It is the place where the emperor was enthroned, promulgated his edict or held important ceremonies. It s built on three groups of huge and beautifully carved marble terraces. The hall is 37 mts high and has 55 rooms, the total area being 2377 sq mts. It is the largest palace of wood structure extant in china.

My friends: Sheela, Kapil, Kamal, Nitin, Devan, Sudarsan, Mukul

Place: Forbidden City, Beijing, China. My only words about this place is "Its huge". Will update a short note on Forbidden City sometime this week... Enjoy the pictures. On request, the notes have been added for most of the pictures. :-)

Summer palace Adventure - Part III

2005-11-06T18:52:00.000+08:00

Place: Summer Palace, Beijing.

Memories of Halloween party - 2004

2005-10-29T07:26:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Lucas, Meg and Kiran for arranging such a fabulous halloween party and thanks to rest of troop for joining the party and making it a success.

Place: Kiran's Place, Apt #226. Austin. We had wonderful halloween party exactly an year ago. I wore dementor costume. It was fun party where people enjoyed a lot with drinks, dance, and music. I was busy taking pictures and dancing. It started at around 10 pm and ended at around 3 am early morning...

Place: 6th Street, Austin downtown. Day after the Halloween party, there was a halloween parade on 6th Street in Austin. 6th Street is known for parades, Pubs, Dance clubs (Not recommend for students, by professors)... On regular weekend people come here to drink and enjoy the party environment on this road. The roads of this street is closed for vehicles during weekends. On halloween parade most people form a group and dressed according to theme, few as star war troop with Jade`, Yoda, and some in Justice League, some as disney characters and so on. Some individual were also were special attraction as the above Zombie. Most of the young cute girls wore flower dresses... and Looking at a person (Picture below) I thought some are extreme, dressed and behaving themselves as cops and having a bike like cop does - woh thats the cooling thing in US to do, but I was wrong, when I was told that he is a true cop monitoring the parade, I hope he didn't see me taking his picture. Anyway Enjoy the pictures...

Sweet memories of Halloween party... :-))

Summer palace Adventure - Part 2

2005-10-26T21:56:00.000+08:00

Place: Summer Palace, Beijing, China.

During this visit, I had to climb a small hill, It was worth the effort I had put to climb the hill... Got to see many interesting places and temples. Initial climb was not so steep and later we followed people (As the saying goes, when in Rome, do as Romans do) and trekked to top of the hill with great effort, Janata took shorter and more steeper path to reach at the top. I was really amazed and didn't knew that I could do this. I have taken this as some sort of motivation for my next adventure "Great wall of China" this weekend.

After climbing, we visited Buddha temple and prayed for our needs and "World Peace"... Buzz word, isn't it? I prayed for my safe return to India after my onsite assignment.

Outside the temple there was this magnificent view of City on one side and lake on the other side. Couldn't resist taking snaps. We spent some time taking photos of each other and were enjoying the view. It was really pleasant experience.

Check out for part 3 (final part of Summer palace)

Summer palace Adventure - Part 1

2005-10-23T23:19:00.000+08:00

Place: Summer Palace, Beijing. This is the corridor in Summer palace, interestingly its 700 + mts long (nearly half a mile) and it has the painting done through out. In this picture you can see some of the horizontal wooden bar which are painted. At regular distance there are kinda rest areas. Picture is shown below. Along this corridor there is lake shore and on the lake there is a monumental structure. Sorry, Don't know what is it called, as I didnt had enough time to see all the places. Planning to visit once more and will update then.

Glimpse of ShanGhai - Fastest Developing City in the World

2005-10-19T17:25:00.000+08:00

This is just the glimpse of ShanGhai, China - This City is one of fastest developing city in the world. As far I have seen, the modern architecture of buildings are more advanced than what I have seen in US (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Etc). The Roads are better here, but unlike US, there is huge traffic but its moving traffic.

While traveling for Medical tests (Compulsory for every expat who lands in China), I just had glimpse of Downtown. I think its one of biggest downtown, I have ever seen apart from Manhattan.

Traveling in Taxi/CAB is pretty cheaper and affordable. I didn't have enough time to explore other places in ShanGhai. If I get some time during my stay in China, I would definitely like to stay in ShanGhai at least for a week and enjoy roaming around.

New York

2005-09-20T22:23:00.000+08:00

Place: Manhattan, New York. View of Manhattan from Liberty Island. Took me 26 snaps... and worst part is the boats and sails moving around were disturbing the image when merging. If one look at the enlarged picture would find over lapping places... Need to find a way to merge decently...

Chicago Skyline

2005-09-20T22:18:00.000+08:00

Place: Chicago. To get this picture I had to take 20 different snaps and with the help of Photo stitch, merged all those into this one magnificant view. If I get a chance to visit Chicago again, I would like to take the same in night light. :-))

Skyline, Chicago

2005-08-20T00:12:00.000+08:00

Place: Downtown, Chicago. The entire stretch of huge buildings is named "SkyLine".
The tallest buiding on the left is Sears Tower and this is currently the tallest building in US. This is just the part of Skyline. The Next blog will a complete view of Skyline.

On the Way to Las Vegas

2005-07-31T09:17:00.000+08:00

OntheWay: Pheonix to Las Vegas

South rim view of Grand Canyon

2005-07-31T09:10:00.001+08:00

Location: SouthRim, Grand Canyon

SunRise behind golden clouds

2005-07-31T09:05:00.000+08:00

Location: SouthRim, Grand Canyon

My Interest

2005-07-20T14:44:00.000+08:00

Ferrari Enzo: This model is my favorite. I bought this car for 40 USD. Its worth. I am planning to purchase Ford Shelby Mustang 1967 model, the one where Nicholas Cage enjoys his ride in Gone in sixty seconds.

Flowers

2005-07-08T04:14:00.000+08:00

Hidden Beauty

Desire

Place: Austin. A visit to Austin downtown, and I shot these.

I named the first one as "Hidden Beauty" - I could find only one rose flower in that area.
Second one is named as "Desire" - Initially, I took snap of big flower and accidentally captured part of small flower. I couldnt resist capturing both together. I had wait for wind to stop disturbing.

Flying Girl

2005-07-06T05:47:00.000+08:00

Place: SeaWorld, San Antonio. three visits to SeaWorld really paid. I also captured some amazing videos of Shamu (killer Whale), but I cannot post them in this blog. This picture is one of the wonderful shot taken when I visited second time.

Democracy

2005-07-06T05:25:00.000+08:00

People's opinion about working Democractic govt in developed nations.

6th Street Boys

2005-06-13T00:13:00.000+08:00

Who Are they? 6th St Boys. Left to Right: Ashwin, Kiran, Lucas, Nitin, Sunil

compete view of South point, Desert View, Grand Canyon

2005-06-11T23:24:00.001+08:00

From Left: Deepak, Roopa(behind), Randhir.

This will be the memorable picture I have ever taken. I nearly took 7 minutes to take photo alone. I had to do little bit of study of surroundings for the view I wanted. Weather there was too cold and I wasnt able to hold my camera. Other snaps taken during this time were blurred because of non-stability of camera.

This looks like a great hole in the center of the Earth. I am wondering how did I manage to get straight view into curved one. Believe me, none of the photos posted in this blog are digitally remastered, only few have been croped for sizes thats it.

This photo is croped to 70% as the rightmost side of the picture covered the telescope and the background was not clear.

This one my favorite. This is the awesome view of Grand Canyon. we spend like 6 hours in GC and I had some amazing and memorable pictures.

Strip view, Stratosphere tower

2005-06-10T10:34:00.000+08:00

Place: Las Vegas. The Strip of Las Vegas starts at Stardust and stretch to 3 miles down till Mandalay bay. This picture has story behind it. When I first visited Stratosphere tower and saw this view, I felt the need to capture this and tried for 4 hours, but of no use. I Couldnt get a clear shot with night vision and 8X optical Zoom. The floor is lot noisy as it has 3 extreme games. I gave up and came back to Austin. To my luck, my friends forced to plan my next trip to LV again in November and this time I took tripod wasting 50 USD. When we reached Stratosphere tower, security authorities of tower didnt allow me to carry tripod to the top of the tower because of security issues. When we reached top of the tower, I had to concentrate real hard not to shake the camera. Lately after 70 tries I got 3 clear shots and this one is the best of those. Worth the time, money and effort spent on these 3 pictures. Don't you think so?

Downtown Austin

2005-06-10T06:29:00.000+08:00

Place: Congress Ave, Austin, TX.The Road ends in front of Texas State Capital Building.Worth risking life.

My Amateur Photography

2005-06-10T06:06:00.000+08:00

During my college days I developed interest in photography, specially after fashion show, dance performances during college day function in final year. I was more interested in knowing about photography than anything else.

From that day till now I have shot thousands of pictures, I remember each picture and they have something to tell... I never missed an opportunity to utilize my camera...

For few photos I have wasted hours waiting for that perfect shot, revisited the place spending hundred of dollars and for few I risked my life standing in the middle of busy road, edge of canyon, in the waves far from shore...

But all of these act were worth doing...

I am updating few of those...

I also hold an kind of record in our project team, shooting more than 300 pictures in less than 3 hours. After this madness, I rarely touch camera. When I do, I have something nice going in my album.

Please enjoy my Amateur photography, write comments if you have anything to convey me.

S.