Summer 2013

School has started and we are back to the routine.

We all did a trip to a village this summer vacation - the kids enjoyed this trip a lot. They got to see all kinds of domestic and farm animals and also got to see a Mango Orchard. I was surprised to see my bread cheese eating kids seamlessly move to Jowar roti and egg plant curry. Angel's first exclamation was - "They have a calf as a pet here".  Apple has given new names to the animals and looks like the names have stuck. They got lots of opportunities to climb trees and jump. They wanted to see peacocks and their uncle indulged them one evening, going all around the village till they got to see a flock of them. So per Apple's count they saw 20 peacocks and 65 pigs :).

This Summer also took us to the cool and foggy hills of Mahabaleshwar. Ate lots of strawberry, strawberry cream and mulberry (was not in season, but still some was available). Also ate some fruit called Kali maina dongrachi maina - It is a wild fruit, which grows on the hills. It was the first time I was eating it and it was very tasty. Ate another new fruit which looked like a cashew fruit but was tasting similar to pear - crunchy and juicy. Forgot to take a picture. But some Google research tells me that the fruit is called as water apple. There are 2 varieties of it Rose apple and the green one.

To keep the kids tired out busy for the rest of their vacation time there was skating and swimming. They can now swim and were working on their back stroke, when we called it quits and went on vacation to Mahabaleshwar.

How was your summer?

Sunrise

This one is for Tharini as she celebrates an important day in her and her son's (Thambi's) life. I share with you a few cherished pictures of a sunrise taken atop mount Haleakala in Maui.

A little story to go with the pictures: These pictures were taken in December of 2003, when we had planned an impromptu visit to Maui, Hawaii. On realizing that we were getting 10 days vacation by taking a couple days off, during the holidays, we had planned and packed and departed for Hawaii in less than a week's time. The Hawaii vacation is definitely one of our cherished vacations. Sun and sand during December is awesome!, even if all one is escaping is the winter of California.

Among other things, watching the sunrise at Haleakala was on our list and we set off one morning at 3 AM from our hotel to reach in time atop the summit. It was pitch dark, with most of the town sleeping and we were off on our adventure, navigating the curvy slopes of Hana . Anybody who has driven the road to Hana knows how teacherous the drive can be and here we were tackling it in darkness, having gotten acquainted with it the day before in full daylight.

After a couple hours drive when we reached the bottom of mount Haleakala, we noticed that not a single car was going up at that time of the day. V and I were apprehensive as to whether we were doing the right thing, whether we had read correctly that it was a tourist attraction or not. But all our fears were allayed once we reached the top of the mountain. Loads of people were already up there, wrapped in thick blankets to protect themselves from wind chill at above 10,000 ft.

The sight that greeted us above that mountain was Spectacular. The clouds were below us and there was clear sky as far as the eyes could see. We patiently waited for the sun to peek out shivering under our warm clothes and thick blankets wrapped around us.

V wasn't sure we would get to see a nice sunrise as it was very cloudy that day. But needless to say what we saw was magnificent. Nature unravelling itself before your eyes is definitely worth a watch, even if it means you drag yourselves out of bed at 3 in the morning. Once the first sliver of light broke through the clouds, the change was rapid. It took just about five minutes to go from dark to bright light. Without further ado, let me present these pictures to you.









p.s: The timestamp on our camera was not set correctly at that time.