RSS FeedIn search of Nessie monster
Jan 29, 2012 Castle, Photo Essay, Scotland, UK
After two years I visited Loch Ness and Urquhart castle, I was there again. Unlike last time where we drove all the way to the castle, we decided to take the cruise on the dark waters of Loch Ness to reach Urquhart Castle. It was a windy day, but the clear sky and a bit of sunshine made it an enjoyable ride to the castle. Here are few photos taken while searching for the mysterious monster of Loch Ness. :)
Dark blue waters of Loch Ness
Hotel Loch Ness Clansman – starting point of cruise journey
Another view from the cruise
Urquhart Castle, as seen from the boat
Closer look of Urquhart Castle
Edged and taken
Jan 4, 2012 England, London, UK
Cricket to an Indian is what weather to a British – a conversation starter. If I’ve to be a bit superlative, I can say Cricket runs in most of the Indians’ blood. For a person like me who is one of those millions who follow cricket, visiting Lord’s cricket ground was a must. During my six months stay in London in 2009, I set out visiting places on weekends. At last when I roamed around in the Lord’s stadium, I was delighted. But at the same time, I was a bit disappointed to not to see Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid’s name on the honor board – who missed scoring a century by just five runs.
While it took fifteen years for Dravid to get a century at Lords, I was back again in Lords within 2 years – just to see Dravid’s name on the ‘Honor board’. But I chose a wrong day to visit the stadium – which was a match day and visitors are not allowed in the pavilion on match days. The match was between Berkshire and Hertfordshire counties.
Instead of getting to see the honor board, I had an opportunity to witness few deliveries from the commentary box. While there was a buzz in the commentary box taking in the beautiful view, it died down as the bowler started his stride for his delivery. The batsman tried chasing a wide one and edged it effortlessly. The ball flew between the wicket keeper and the first slip, amid the oohs and aahs coming out from everyone in the press box. The next delivery was a similar one to the first delivery and the batsman repeated the mistake again and edged it for the second time. This time the keeper was quick to react and pouched the ball. Watching a fall of wicket form the press box compensated with the missed chance to roaming around the pavilion.
Here is a view of the good old Lord’s pavilion from the stands.
Catalina, the flying boat
More than the display of Vulcans and F16s at the Luechars airshow, what interested me more was the slowest of all the planes, Catalina. Used widely during World War 2, Consolidated PBY Catalina is a flying boat – capable of land/take off both on land and water. Here are couple of photos of Catalina which I captured during the airshow.
And it took me a while to realise of all the flights, why the slowest one got me interested – it reminded me of the animated series Talespin :)
Leuchars Airshow
Despite staying in Bangalore for a long time I never managed to go to Aero India, a biennial air show held in Yelahanka Air force station, Bangalore. When I got to know about airshow by Royal Air Force at Luechars, I couldn’t stop myself going there besides the bad weather. The day started with rain and visibility of just 100 meters when we started from Aberdeen. But we were fortunate enough as rain gave away. Though the parachute display was cancelled due to bad weather, we had a glimpse of a range of flights – The Red Arrows, Hawk T1 and Tucano T1 – all three from Royal Air Force, F16s from Dutch Air Force, Vulcans, Pitts, Catalina (flying boat) and Dornier Alpha Jet from French Air.
The excitement of witnessing my first airshow made me mess up with my camera settings and on top of that light was against us along with overcast sky. That resulted in very few considerably good photos of the metal birds. A friend mentioned that this RAF Leuchars Airshow was no where close to Aero India which happens every two years in Bangalore (Leuchars airshow is an one day event which happens every year, where as Aero India is a five day event).
