Hmmm...

....New Year

New Year is happening all around me, celebrations with crackers, serial lights, church service, temple prayers, people with happy faces moving here and there.

Darkness and light

(Pictures are the Bay of Bengal near Tiger's Cave, Chennai and the evening sky on the other side of the waters!)

Climbing...

...Mountains

Even as my memories of the Himalayas may not fade in this lifetime, I am trekking each month as if the mountains are calling me for regular visits. The whole lot of news stories with photographs I have taken of the Himalayas are yet to get exhausted in The Hindu, but the lure of the mountains is hugging me close to them more often.
Last Deepavali, I was away at Yelagiri for two days, when I climbed the Swami Malai, a three-hour trek up and down. My guides insisted on taking me through the road not taken and I climbed up rocks, drinking cool water out of a spring, before I reached the top with a Shiva temple there.
Last month, I knew what it was to have an adventure when I climbed the Parvatamalai. Till one point, the trekking stops and from the rocky 'Gadapparai,' it is a climb up metal ladders, holding iron chains or rods, with feet firm on the rocks and faith firm at heart. At one point, the fear was unbearable as all around there is open space and all one has to hold on were there in two hands and two toes. The fear turned out into a song, a bhajan - Om Namah Shivaya - Prana Priyaya Parameshwaraya Mrityunjayaya Namah Om. Fear vanished and cheer set in as I soon reached the top.
Now it's another month since and I might be trekking in the Velliangiri hills at Coimbatore.
Till then....Good Bye!
(Photos: A face of the mountain at Parvathamalai resembles that of a goddess, a tea vendor told me. The boating with the background of dark clouds gathering for a good shower at the lake in Yelagiri.)