A Solitary Saturday - A Travelogue

I had been solo to Mysore for the 4ooth Dasera Celebration on 17th.

Left on 16th Morning, 630A.M, Jayanagar. Reached Mysore around 10:30.

Settled down and left to explore Mysore by foot around 12.

It is a small city & great place to walk if the weather is good.

Walked around 10 kms, preparations were going on for the next day

everywhere. Reached the famour St. Philomena's church around 2pm.

Here I tried my hand or rather my fingers in pencil sketching :

Yeah, I skewed the perspective, I have never been good at this. So,

I went In hoping to fare better with my camera. And this is what I got after clicking

slyly:

Candles:

------------------------------------------

Stature Lessens As We Age,

But Never Our Flame,

Burning Bright Until We Die.

Holy Arch:

------------------------------

I stand convicted Guilty,

In thy Holy Arch,

I clicked this forbidden Pic

And a vertical panorama from outside.

From here I caught a bus to Srirangpatna, and reached around 4pm.

Saw this sign boar on the Mysore-Bangalore Highway:

I decided to visit the Gumbaz and Sangam.
Walked down the winding road to the Gumbaz. There was a sizeable crowd, but
not too much. Tried out to get an HDR shot of the gumbaz. It is a shot where
you take 3 to 5 photographs of the same image with different exposure compensations
around 0. Usually -1/3, 0 and 1/3. And Then you edit the pic with some specific
software to get an image with its full dynamic range. The result:

Gumbaz:

------------------------

At this Gumbaz Of Sultans.

The Muezzin summons

Devout Clouds, That Come Rushing

You can see the image is a bit blurred in the foreground. this is because I did not
have a tripod. So there were slight offsets between the 3 shots.

Then it was another walk to the Sangam, confluence of Kaveri and it's tributary-lokmathi. It was quite a beautiful sunset there:

It rained for a few minutes, and while I was a bit away from the river under a
shelter, I saw a lone couple with an umbrella at the river bank. The sight looked
good against the sunset and I hoped to click them once the rain stopped. It did,
and I rushed to them. After slight hesitation, I asked if they could pose for me.
They were eager as I had overheard them talking to each other about how their camera
phone was not able to get a good picture. They asked if I could share the photo with

them, and I told I will mail it for sure.
So after a few shots, I got one which I was happy with:

Tryst:

----------------------------

A Conflence That Portends,

Sky Smeared In Red,

Feel My Pulse, This Is Our Tryst.

They thanked me and I thanked them.

Just adjacent were 2 coracles which had come back because of the rain. They looked glowing with partial sunlight on them. And I got this shot:

Coracles:

----------------------------------------

Oh Coracles Of Kaveri,

Floating lives Across,

Take Me, I No Know Where To Go

By the time I left it was already twilight, there was a detour on the way back which purportedly led to another river bank. Took it and walked a km+ but still didn't find it. So turned back and while walking noticed a beautiful tree in the center of a paddy field:

Went In and spent close to an hour sitting under it.

It was wonderful.

Cut-off from the insane bustle of traffic, and people, it was some quality alone time.

Tripped on sound of insects and small irrigation water rivulets.

Left Around 8. On the way back, I listened to a song on my pod. And found an apt one.

"Naan Varuven", ARR, Ravanan". It means "I will be back". And For sure I will.

End of the day, I would have clocked around 20 kilometres on foot.

And back in Banglore I wrote the captions you see in some photographs.

They were a goofed up attempt at Haiku. Instead of 5-7-5 syllables, I confused and ended up with 7-5-7 :D