Smiley Saturdays - 3 (Faking it)

With another No-ride week in this sexy Mumbaiya Monsoon, I am actually started feeling some rust over my shoulders. No ride means no trip stories, and also no new photograph. Last month I was able to publish more than my regular quota of posts because of this new series. It not only provided me a reason to post regularly, but also to get on the streets for photographs too; feeding both of my novice hobbies.

Faking a smile is the worst thing I feel to do, but isn’t it one of the most sought after emotional mask we the poor people need. This time I’m posting an artificial smile, a smile that has been fried to get into the perfect taste (shape).

Tasty Potato-Smileys at Nichole's Cafe, RCP

I clicked this picture through the 5MP lens of Motorola Defy, and edited for brightness, contrast etc on Photoshop. Order and shot were both on my colleague Abhishek Mukherjee's suggestion.

Trekking Ghansoli Gawli Dev (Parsik) Hill

It’s been there for geological ages, we have been looking at it for last about 4years and I have been planning to trek it since a long time. Finally, few weeks back, we trekked the Ghansoli Hill.

Ghansoli Hill is located at the eastern boundary of Ghansoli town, behind our office complex at RCP. The hill or better hillock is a part of small range that separates Kalyan and Navi Mumbai towns. A search on Google Map returns with a name Parsik Hill for it, though there is one more rather famous Parsik Hill in Navi Mumbai. We also found a NewsArticle, that talks about NMMC plans to develop Nature Awareness Centre at this hills and calls it Gawli Dev Hill. Here, we would be calling it Ghansoli Hill. I asked my colleague about it and he readily agreed. The very next Sunday we did it with another friend. We weren't aware of the route. All we knew is that a Central Road runs along the western edge of the hill and can be reached through the Vashi-Mhape road. We later found that there’s a Bus…

A Day at Global Vipassana Pagoda (A Photo Story)

What I like most about the cities we live in is the places we generally not aware about. Like the case of one of its own kind Butterfly Park of Thane, which is at stone throw distance from my place and I came to knew about it a few months back only. Then there is this Pagoda – another one of its own kind – world renowned and still not known to many city dwellers. We visited this place to take pictures and let me confirm it, we were stoned by the colors and the mystical sky (check out the Photo Story at the bottom of the post)
Located at Northern most corner of the Megacity of Mumbai, across the Gorai creek, Global Vipassana Pagoda is a meditation hall built out of gratitude to the Buddha, his teaching and the community of monks practicing his teaching (Wikipedia). The Pagoda is also known for being built on the world's largest stone dome without any supporting pillars, at height of ~29 metres and external diameter 94.82-97.46 m. It is, thus, twice the size of the Gol Gumbaz Dome in…

Trekking Naneghat in Monsoon

Naneghat has been like an annual pilgrimage for me. So, when I planned for the ride and trek this year, I was sure I wouldn’t be blogging about it. But the way it turned out to be – I couldn’t resist jotting it down and share. On just a few days’ notice three Decide&RideTM Bullet guys agreed for the ride and trek along with a colleague and my roommate. Plan was simple - Ride/ Food/ Trek/ Food/ Trek down/ Food/ Ride back. Itinerary included Heavy to moderate Rain and Fatigue with Directions, misdirection, lot of fresh pahadi water, scenery and slips. We started it at around 6 AM morning. It was raining since last evening, and when we started it was still raining. Josh took Ashutosh as pillion and Abhishek hoped on to my pillion seat, Sandy was to join us at Kalyan naka with Monty – who found his bull not ready for ride and had to cancel it (though he rushed and did power-trek to meet us at top later). Anyways, it was still raining when we met at Kalyan naka and left for Naneghat.
Nane…

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