Travelogue Goa: Day 1 - Tamdbi Surla

Finally, we were in Goa and were ready to venture out and visit some good places in Goa. As I mentioned in Getting prepped up, I had created a theme for each day and had come up with the places to visit for each day based on the theme. So the theme for Day 1 was

• Visit one new location - which was Mahadev temple at Tambdi Surla
• Visit Old Goa Churches and Museums.

Alas, what I did was only a travel schedule and executing it was more difficult than I had thought. Everybody started complaining that the schedule was hectic and they wanted to rest. So to suit everybody, the schedule was modified to include only one new location - Mahadev temple at Tambdi surla and rest was to be postponed to the next day and adjusted there of.

About Tambdi Surla

Tambdi Surla is a little known place that consists of a twelfth century temple of lord shiva. This temple is the oldest temple in Goa and is little disturbed by the various conquests and destruction of portuguese and muslim invasions. The temple is nestled between mountains and has a clear stream of water flowing alongside. The site, even thought not visited as other places in Goa, has been well maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. The temple was built by the Goa-Kadamba dynasty rulers and is constructed in the Jain architectural style. for more information on this temple visit this link.

Getting there

Tambdi Surla is approximately 65 kilometers from the capital city Panaji and about 32 kilometers from Ponda. The easiest landmark for Tambdi Surla is Bhagwan Mahaveer sanctuary and Mollem National Park. You can get there by following NH4A which ultimately connects Goa to Belgaum, Karnataka.

The ride to Tambdi Surla is as scenic as the temple itself. You will have to pass through deep goan lands full of fields and forests and you can witness the traditional houses and lifestyle of the Goans. Being the monsoon season, the entire way was covered with a green blanket with the rains adding the grandeur.

It took us about one hour to reach Tambdi Surla due to the winding and narrow roads. But once you get there it is a totally different experience. Even though this place seems far away and having only one temple to visit, it is worth it and a trip has to be made by travelers atleast once in their life time. Below are some of the photos at Tambdi surla

The Cobbled way to the temple

The Mahaveer Temple

Stones with writings on it

Wet stone corrupted with beer bottles

The pristine stream

The Way back from the temple

The temple contains a shiva lingam and is worshiped on a daily basis. We spent about half an hour at the temple and headed back from Tambdi Surla to Ponda for rest.

On the way back, we had lunch in one of the Goan house cum restaurant type hotels which was run by a old man, his wife and his daughter. The food was traditional goan fish curry rice with a fish fry, cocum soup, cabbage baji and was splendid. The refill of the fish curry and fish fry was unlimited for a cost of just Rs. 45. If you want to taste the traditional food of Goa at very very reasonable prices then it is good to visit these home run restaurants rather than going to the costly ones which don't even come close to the taste that the home run restaurants provide.

After lunch, we headed back to our accommodation and hardly did anything for the rest of the day except have a good sleep and another splendid dinner in the night at a traditional goan restaurant.

Enjoy!

the Photograchar

Cloudscapes

It was one of those days where you really want to do some disciplined and scientific photography, but all you find is a peanut to take snaps of. Fortunately for me I came across a seed of a jackfruit lying around basking in the glory of the afternoon sun. Thinking something is better than nothing, I got hold of a close up shot of the jackfruit seed - of course this was before the clouds had built up and I had an opportunity to take some good first time exposures of those. The Jackfruit seed turned out as the image below in the CCD of the camera.

Close up of a Jack fruit Seed

I had bought a new Nikkor 55-300 mm VR lens, and was disappointed for just finding the jackfruit seed to take shots of. Then as if to answer my prayers, the skies went beautifully gloomy and majestic clouds started to form with a bladder full of water to sprinkle on the earth. After waiting for about two and half hours, I was able to take the following exposures -

A Random Cloud Formation

What does this look like? Is there a UFO?

Reminds me of Snow lifting of the Himalayas

Dumbfounded!!!

Looks like a Snow Mountain

A Small strip of rainbow can be seen in this exposure

A Heavenly Avalanche

Windswept clouds

Most of the need I felt when I was taking the exposure was of a Neutral Density filter which would have deepened the colors of the sky and improved the contrast of the image. Alas, I am yet to buy one and will have to go with what I've got.

Hope you enjoyed... More to come...

Some snaps from chennai

Recently, I had the good opportunity to travel to chennai with one of my friends. He had some work, I did not have, so I tagged along. We had traveled on Shatabdi, and I got a change to try my hand to snap photos from the moving train. So here goes...

Motion photo of an oncoming train

The above photo was intended to capture a clear picture of the oncoming train, but it got blurred because of wrong shutter speed!

A Stationery road roller

Clearly better than the first picture, but still blurred. Overall i believe that the effect came good...

A Landscape

A Little bit too late to capture the rows of arecanut trees growing on the road side. I intended to capture the trees across the shot rather than having it at a point.

ME!

Well a little blur but good with a view of the train compartment in the left background.

Inside the compartment

this shot was intentionally blurred to give a abstract view.

Close up view of a seat ahead of me

I wanted the photo composition to come out something like a New York style shot.

Chennai city scape from my hotel window

This shot was composed from the window of my hotel. Focus points are not adjusted to allow the users view to find something in this.

Wall Hangings

Wall hangings in my hotel room. the darn thing blurred out and i forgot to take a clear one.

Construction workers on a building - miniature effect.

the original shot was digitally modified to show a miniature effect using the Nikon DSLR D3100 in camera photo editing software.

The Fish Eye

Original image modified with the fish eye effect.

Merry go Round at the Marina Beach

The merry go round was captured using a 1 second shutter speed at HI1 ISO setting

Another Merry Go round

Captured with a longer (1.5 s) shutter speed

A Fortune Teller

A Fortune teller reading his fortune on his cell phone!

Snapping with the stars

One of the firsts that i had seen on marina beach. 3d effect posters of film stars and famous personalities - who needs to go to madam toussads?

She sells Sea Shells on the Sea Shore

An attempted macro image of a sea shell curtain.

Fish eye on a Sea Shell

fish eye effect applied on sea conches.

Bhelpuri?

who knows..never tried. got this shot in front of an expectant store keeper.

Horsey go round!

Soft focus applied to the merry go round.

On the sea shore

People enjoying waves on the sea shore at Marina beach.

The trip to Chennai was a lot illuminating, since I learnt a lot of dos and dont's of travel photography. Here are some important ones.

• Get a good hold of ISO, Aperture and Shutter speeds - or you will lose beautiful shots as and when they happen
• Don't forget a tripod - i would have shot other long exposure photos if i had a tripod
• Learn how to use flash modes - there are several modes which give different effects
• Composition is the key - without this, you will not be able to take beautiful landscapes, city scapes and portraits
• Dont just stand and shoot - bend your knees, lay on your back, look for a weird angle - all this will contribute to beautiful shots of your travel experience
• Get Inspired - Browse through some good shots of the places you are visiting on the internet and boost your creative thought process.

Hope this was useful for all you photographers out there. Please do comment on anything that i have not mentioned in the dos and donts.

Enjoy!

the Photograchar

Pointless activity

Sitting at home doing nothing on weekends, i got bored out of my mind. Prepped up my camera and went on the terrace to shoot something creative. Well on that gloomy day I noticed nothing but a fly playing its way on a jasmine creeper doing god knows what. Desperate to do something I went ahead and shot a short clip of this green fly.

Creativity needs a discipline - without discipline you tend to do a lot of things that are useless and pointless!!!

Hope to upload and share more of these videos. You can also watch my videos on my Youtube Channel "the Photograchar!

Enjoy!