Supermoon and neighbourhood

Chennai MRTS

Chennai skies

Skyscapes from the terrace of our appartment in Velachery

MRTS

Mass Rapid Transit System

A panned photograph of a local train leaving Velachery Station traveling towards North Chennai caught while we were experimenting with new camera Santosh had acquired recently.

Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XT (350 D)
Exposure: 1/15 s, f/5.6, ISO 100

Weekend ride to Mahabalipuram

Santosh has recorded this video of one of the weekend rides to Mahabalipuram on Royal Enfield Machismo on May 13, 2007 with his Nokia N72 camera phone. The road is the famous East Coast Road (ECR). I suddenly thought that I should share it here.


At the same time I am getting inspired about going on a early morning ride. :) Let me see if I can manage to go.

Picnic to Anna Zoological Park

We visited Anna Zoological Park yesterday. It was a fine Sunday morning. Arignar Anna Zoological Park is situated at Vandalur which is 32 Km away from the metropolitan city of Chennai on the GST Road (NH-45). On the Eastern side of the road is the zoo over a sprawling area of 602 ha. Others with me were Alok, Dinesh, Harshal, Sujit, Chintamani, Renu and one more Prasad. It was an enjoyable experience. I took some photographs and a few times managed to get to photographed also. Yesterday an Indian Sea Gull caught fancy of my camera. It turned out to a good shootout. I have uploaded all these the photos on Picasa Web Albums.

I was listening to songs of Pt. Vasantrao Deshpande, his grandson Rahul and Pt. Jitendra Abhisheki on Saturday night. 'bagaLyaachi maaLaphule', 'surat piyaa ki na chhin bisauraayi', 'sarvaatmakaa sarveshwaraa' and 'kaataa rute kuNaalaa' were among them. These songs kept playing in the my mind all the time we were in the zoo. And, in fact, they are being played on my computer even now. The mood was enlivened as Renu initiated gaaNyaachyaa bhendyaa after we boarded local train back to the city.

This zoo has some thing special in it. It was my third visit there, still each time the zoo has managed to make me immensely happy.

Picnic to Anna Zoological Park Vandalur

How to reach there:
Vandalur is about 8 km from Tambaram and about 33 km from Chennai Central Railway Station. The zoo is well connected to the city by road and rail. There is direct service from various parts of the city to Vandalur / Arignar Anna Zoological Park bus stop. Also from city all buses going to Guduvancheri pass through Vandalur stop. For coming by local train, train going to Chengalapttu stops at Vandalur Railway station which is about 1 km from the zoo gate or you may come by Chennai Beach to Tambaram local train, get down at Tambaram. From Tambaram you can take another local traint to Chengalapattu or take a bus to the zoo. The map on http://www.aazoopark.gov.in/directions.html will help you locate the place.

Zoo Timing: 9 am to 6 pm.
I would strongly advise you to reach the zoo entrance by 9 am itself so that you can have enough time to walk around the zoo leisurely. There is a toy-car ride available too. I won't advise you to take Lion Safari as, firstly, it will take a lot of your time to book your seats, and secondly, it will bring you back within a few minutes after visiting just a single place leaving you unsatisfied, well, most probably.

Photograph of the week - Animals

A friendly deer in front of my room in Cauvery Hostel

January 11, 2007. IIT Madras, Chennai.
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/25 s, f/2.8

Photograph of the day - People

Kay Kay at IITM's annual cultural festival Saarang

Place: Open Air Theatre, IIT Madras. Jan 25, 2005.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/8 s, f/4.9. ISO rating not recorded. But my best guess is ISO400.

Photograph of the day - People

Classroom puzzle

Place: Sevalaya
Camera: Canon Powershot A95 (courtesy: Arunendra)
Exposure: 1/10 s, f/4.5, ISO not recorded

Photograph of the day - People

Members of Marathi Mitra Mandal IIT Madras just before going for Ganesh Visarjan at Elliot Beach Chennai

Date: Aug 28, 2006
Camera: Sony DSC H1
Exposure: 1/60 s, f/2.8, ISO64

Photograph of the day - Travel

Ride along East Coast Road

ECR is a 150 km long and connects Chennai to Puducherry.

Date: 6.15 pm, Feb 15, 2007
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: Details not recorded. ISO100.

Photograph of the day - Nature

Aeroplane taking off past setting sun

Place: Chennai
Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/500 s, f/4.9, ISO100

Photograph of the day - Skyscapes

Sky over the Elliot Beach in Chennai on one evening in September (2005).

Use of tripod with ISO100 setting would have reduced the grains in the picture and would have enhanced colour saturation. It also would have been appropriate measure as the effort was to have people in foreground in silhouette form.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/500 s, f/3.2, ISO400

Photograph of the day - Nature

This photograph is one of the better photos I took just a couple of hours back near the volleyball courts in the campus.

Camera: Canon Powershot A80
Exposure: 1/500 sec., f/7.1, ISO100

Landing at Kamaraj Domestic Air Terminus Chennai

This video is taken at the end of the journey from Pune to Chennai on the way back from Maharashtra trip in April 2005. The video shows the landing of Jet Airways' A320 aircraft at Kamaraj International Airport Chennai from south end of airstrip after hovering for twenty minutes.

Trip to Thirukkulkundram and Vedanthangal

Finally I am sharing something. This is regarding my visit to some places near Chennai.

Nitin and myself had decided to go on outing on 12th June. We were joined by Amit and Vinay. We started from the campus at 7:00 am in the morning. Headed straight towards ECR in a car and stopped at Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corp Resorts for breakfast. It is nice place to spend time. Very calm! It is covered with many trees. There we decided to go directly to Thirukkulkundram, popularly known as Pakshi Teerth. The road was known partially. We had no trouble in reaching the place. Anyway we did not decide to go to the hill temple. There is an ancient but well built pond at some 200 m from the foot of the hill.

It took us almost 12:30 am to reach Chengulupetu. This is on NH45. We braked for lunch in one of the restaurents. Ironically we had to pay 95 Rupees for lunch of four as against 120 Rupees paid at TTDC Resort for breakfast in morning.

After some traveling a little back-n-forth on the highway we found way to Vedanthangal. It’s a nice bird sanctuary. This is not an ideal time to go there. Anyway it wouldn’t matter as we were out to just to be there at the places in our mind. This time we spent a longer time in the Sanctuary compared to my last trip there with my lab-mates. This time there was less crowd and less birds also. Still I would say all of us enjoyed the two hours we spent there. After some refreshment at the gate of the Sanctuary, we started journey back to Mahabalipuram.

We did not enter the town. We reached to Tiger Caves in the outskirts. The place was looking shabby with two guys reclining at the cave with cigarettes in hand. Anyway we headed directly to the seashore. Had some great time there!

It was pretty early than expectation that we reached the campus. It was a very less tiring visit and so was a different visit.