View allAll Photos Tagged neelkanth
It was not taken in BW. It was as it was. We got the unbearable blow of avalanche wind that came down just a few minutes before and the whiteness prevailed.
It is the North Face of the giant Mount Neelkant as taken on trek to Satopant Tal in Garhwal Himalayas, India
Crude glacial moraine to be crossed to take the narrow trail to the North face basecamp of Mount Neelkanth….taken on trek to Satopant Tal lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
One can see Mount Neelkanth on the left and mount Parvati on the right from the ridge top over Chakratirtha....they are considered to be life partners according to Hindu mythology...
One has to climb up straight for an hour to be on the treacherous knife ridge, walk along it and then descend on the moraine slope on the right to attempt Satopant Tal lake...it was a challenging trek but rewarding too...
Taken on trek to Satopant Tal Lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
The rocky Northwest Face of Mount Neelkanth (6,500 mts) from nearly the top of the glacial moraine above its traditional North Face basecamp....taken on the final day of ascent on trek to Satopnant Tal lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
A self-shot with Mount Neelkanth as taken near Sahasradhara (thousand falls) on trek to Satopant Tal lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
I was stupefied by the sheer brilliance of sun rising on this 22000ft himalayan peak in the Badrinath valley. It was so blindingly beautiful! Awesome nature!! Pl see large.See with www.flickr.com/photos/draskd/24364420934/in/dateposted/
The north face of the Mount Neelkanth (6,596 mts) as taken from Sahasra dhara (thousand streams) on trek to Satopant lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
Myself before an arduous ascent near Sahasradhara glacial zone on trek to Satopant Tal lake in Garhwal Himalayas, India
The North face of the mighty Neelkanth as taken en route Satopant Tal (lake) in Garhwal Himalayas, India
2 hrs before sunset.
I had take this photo when I coming down after visiting Neelkanth temple ( Temple of Lord Shiva). This place is situated in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. Altitude around 1330 meter from sea level and one of the holiest place in Uttarakhand.
The north face of Mount Neelkanth (5,507 Mts) from above Sahashradhara, where hundreds of streams flow through....
Taken on trek to lake Satopant Tal in Garhwal Himalayas, India
Nikkor, 28mm, f/2.8, AI-S, Singh-Ray Gold n Blu Polarizer
Gosaikund is located in the Langtang region of Nepal. Langtang area is a popular place to visit among trekkers and pilgrims. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosaikunda)
The Langtang area is supposed to have 108 holy lakes, of which 85 have been identified. For Hindus Gosaikund is the holiest of these lakes.
According to the Puranas, during Samundra manthan 13 items were released before Dhanvantri emerged with the pot of Amrit. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_manthan)
One of the items that came out was a poison called Halahala. Since, there was no place to safely dispose it off, Shiva agreed to hold it in his throat. But the poison was so potent that it turned his neck blue, hence, the name Neelkanth, and started burning his throat. Since there was no water nearby, Shiva threw his Trishul on ground and the place where the Trishul struck three water fountains spurted out. These became the three lakes: Saraswatikund, Bhairavkund and Gosaikund. After drinking water from Gosaikund Shiva disappeared in the kund.
The poison imparted its blue color to the water of Gosaikund and even today the area around the lake is barren.
“ભગવાન જીવના કલ્યાણને અર્થે જ્યારે મૂર્તિ ધારણ કરે ત્યારે પોતાનું જે અક્ષરધામ અને ચૈતન્યમૂર્તિ એવા જે પાર્ષદ અને પોતાનાં જે ઐશ્વર્ય તે સહિત જ પધારે છે, પણ એ બીજાના દેખ્યામાં આવે નહિ.
“માટે ભગવાનના ભક્તને ભગવાનનું સ્વરૂપ અક્ષરધામ સહિત પૃથ્વી ઉપર વિરાજમાન છે એમ સમજવું અને બીજા આગળ પણ એવી રીતે વાર્તા કરવી.”
- ભગવાન સ્વામિનારાયણ, વચનામૃત ગઢડા પ્રથમનું ૭૧
“When God incarnates for the purpose of granting liberation to the jivas, He is always accompanied by His Akshardhãm, His attendants – who are formed of chaitanya – and all of His divine powers; but they are not perceived by others.
“Therefore, a devotee of God should realise that the form of God along with His Akshardhãm is present on this earth, and he should also explain this fact to others.”
- Lord Swãminãrãyan, Vachanãmrut Gadhadã I-71
Risikesh - Ram Jhula - Neelkanth high in the mountains
... knows this feeling aint right,
having a tea with peanuts,
sheltering in the shadow from a blistering sun.
The Indian roller is very common in the populated plains of India and associated with Hindu legends. It is said to be sacred to Vishnu, and used to be caught and released during festivals such as Dussera or the last day of Durga Puja. A local Hindi name is neelkanth, meaning "blue throat", a name associated with the deity Shiva (who drank poison resulting in the blue throat).
A study on roosting behaviour found that immediately after waking up, the birds spend a few minutes preening followed by flying around their roosting sites. Favoured perches include electric or telegraphic wires. They have also been observed perching in trees and shrubs. Rollers tend mostly at a heights of 3–9 m height from where they forage for ground insects. They may also use taller perches and obtain insects from the upper canopy of trees.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Roller
The Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis), is a member of the roller family of birds. They are found widely across tropical Asia stretching from Iraq eastward across the Indian Subcontinent to Indochina and are best known for the aerobatic displays of the male during the breeding season. They are very commonly seen perched along roadside trees and wires and are commonly seen in open grassland and scrub forest habitats. It is not migratory, but undertakes some seasonal movements. The largest populations of the species are within India, and Several states in India have chosen it as their state bird.
Description
The Indian Roller is a stocky bird about 26–27 cm long and can only be confused within its range with the migratory European Roller. The breast is brownish and not blue as in the European Roller. The crown and vent are blue. The primaries are deep purplish blue with a band of pale blue. The tail is sky blue with a terminal band of Prussian blue and the central feathers are dull green. The neck and throat are purplish lilac with white shaft streaks. The bare patch around the eye is ochre in colour. The three forward toes are united at the base.[2] Rollers have a long and compressed bill with a curved upper edge and a hooked tip. The nostril is long and exposed and there are long rictal bristles at the base of the bill.[3][4]
Three subspecies are usually recognized. The nominate form is found from West Asia (Iraq, Arabia) east across the Indian Subcontinent, and within India north of the Vindhyas mountain ranges. The subspecies indicus is found in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. The southern form has a darker reddish collar on the hind neck which is missing in the nominate form. The race affinis of northeastern India and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Myanmar, Indochina) is sometimes considered a full species, but within the Indian region, it is seen to intergrade with benghalensis. The form affinis is darker, larger and has a purplish brown and unstreaked face and breast.[2] It has underwing coverts in a deeper shade of blue.[3][5]
Distribution and habitat
The Indian roller is distributed across Asia, from West Asia (Iraq), through the Indian Subcontinent (including Sri Lanka and the islands of Lakshadweep and Maldive Islands) into Southeast Asia.[5]
The main habitat is cultivation, thin forest and grassland. They are often seen perched on roadside electric wires.
Ecology and behaviour
These birds are usually seen perched on prominent bare trees or wires. They descend to the ground to capture their prey which may include insects, arachnids,[6] small reptiles (including Calotes versicolor[7] and small snakes[8] and amphibians. Fires attract them[2] and they will also follow tractors for disturbed invertebrates. In agricultural habitats in southern India, they have been found at densities of about 50 birds per km2. They perch mainly on 3—10 metre high perches and feed mostly on ground insects. Nearly 50% of their prey are beetles and 25% made up by grasshoppers and crickets.[9][10][11] The feeding behaviour of this roller and habitat usage are very similar to that of the Black Drongo.[12] During summer, they may also feed late in the evening and make use of artificial lights and feed on insects attracted to them.[13] They are attracted to swarms of winged termites and as many as 40 birds have been seen to perch on a 70 metre stretch of electric wires.[14] Their habit of feeding near roadsides sometimes results in collisions with traffic.[15][16] A decline in the numbers of these birds seen along roadsides in northern India has been noted.[17]
The display of this bird is an aerobatic display, with the twists and turns that give this species its English name. The breeding season is March to June, slightly earlier in southern India. Displays when perched include bill-up displays, bowing, allopreening, wing drooping and tail fanning.[2] Holes created by woodpeckers or wood boring insects in palms are favoured for nesting in some areas.[10] Nest cavities may also be made by tearing open rotten tree trunks or in cavities in building.[3] The cavity is usually unlined and is made up mainly of debris from the wood. The normal clutch consists of about 3-5 eggs. The eggs are white and broad oval or nearly spherical.[4] Both sexes incubate the eggs for about 17 to 19 days.[5] The young fledge and leave the nest after about a month. Nearly 80% of the eggs hatch and fledge.[18]
The call of the Indian Roller is a harsh crow-like chack sound. It also makes a variety of other sounds, including metallic boink calls. It is especially vociferous during the breeding season.
The bird bathes in open water by plunge-diving into it, a behaviour often interpreted as fishing.[19][20] [21] But it may occasionally attempt fishing from water.[5]
Blood parasites Leucocytozoon of the family Plasmodiidae have been noted in the lung tissues.[22] Parasitic helminth worms Hadjelia truncata and Synhimantus spiralis were recorded as well
In culture
Being very common in the populated plains of India, it is associated with legends. A local name is neelkanth (meaning "blue throat"),[25] a name associated with the deity Shiva (who drank poison resulting in the blue throat). During former times, a captive roller would be released by the local ruler during festivals such as Dussera and Durga Puja.[26][27] Adding its chopped feathers to grass and feeding them to cows was believed to increase their milk yield.[28] The Indian Roller has been chosen as the state bird by the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Odisha
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Badrinath is a holy town in the Chamoli district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is one of the four sites in India's Char Dham pilgrimage and gets its name from the Badrinath Temple. The town lies between the Nar and Narayana mountain ranges, 9 km east of the Neelkanth peak (6,596m).
The Secret
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
— Denise Levertov
"A poem about reading, about remembering what has been read, about entering into a conversation with it, via others, in an effort to somehow make it permanent, this winged and sacred moment."
.
it’s the way
radiant epiphanies recur, recur
— Denise Levertov
I love what Levertov says about the radiant epiphanies recurring. Instead of trying to make something wholly unique, why not listen to the voice that calls us back, to the things we circle, to those themes that recur and emerge without us necessarily even noticing at first?
To notice what we're drawn to or what we instinctively return to can tell us something about those things we need to make. To pay attention to what calls to us again and again is a lovely part of practice.
— Shawna Lemay
“All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only;”
Denise Levertov, from “Once Only”
I never ever have to try to remember you, my dearest friend... you're in my heart always; your love beyond boundaries of space and time.
everything feels so certain and doubtless at this beginning - to see through eternity and never feeling to abandon the divine kindness. under these feet, a large network felt for every step taken - to inhabit within, compose them and always be gracefully in love, at ease. the very source of all the wonders, to meet this moment is portal to everlasting peace 💛
from the self-poised center of all depths and breadths and heights,
a glance that gifts me conviction and makes you increasingly dear.
entering the un-rushed grounding of an experience and being open to the moment subtly revealed the wisdom; revelations of many heart moments unfalteringly unfolding and laid bare, 'to love, not use' instead of 'to use, not love.' a string of fulfilled and lived experiences through attention of Heart to what ought to be central and visible in affection; not mentally preoccupied to the timepiece of an invisible ego.
like swans formed as paintings of light and sculpted down to their essences - shaping an innermost world as gracefully & inexorably as its purest visible manifestations, is done through the radiance and rhythm of truthfulness, tenderness and faithfulness; and such purity of thought restores our subtle and respectful sight & our melodious listening. entering the meditative scope of a thought in a many-faceted landscape at break of dawn, each small wonder magnifies through this companionable presence.
Went inside a slippery cave to take this shot inside dense forests of Nar-Narayan range. Amazing feeling of listening to the sound of waterfall developed by confluence of rivers Pankaja and Madhumati which later meet into Ganges. This himalayan trip gave me everything I wanted ..
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Badrinath is a holy town in the Chamoli district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is one of the four sites in India's Char Dham pilgrimage and gets its name from the Badrinath Temple. The town lies between the Nar and Narayana mountain ranges, 9 km east of the Neelkanth peak (6,596m).
•°°○°The man-eating lion of shripur°○°°•
the emperor of the forest covered all the questions and yet any conclusion this crowned character reached were unresolved by another one.
since the different elements in the forest resonate with one another, they created an atmosphere for your glory. as everyone of us seemed to be tied by our secrets and lies, no one asked for answer to the questions nor anyone wants to give them! all-together, the supreme wish in the self keeps the nature of accumulation. the force to purloin that desired thing, even if in a skewed way never brings coherence and honesty to the answers, as the hard questions keep up with the exceeding score. and when you romped through the questions and collected the pleasure in certain minor moments, you don’t necessarily know what causes your major and minor emotions; and what patterns stay, of presences and voices held in a captive cycle - closed enough, like a narrowing down spiral in which you get closer to the center, each time with the repetitive cycle - to the selfish beginning by which you fleshed a few things out. keeping busy with survival, each assessment brings the same result subject to the pressures and contingencies of space and time - tugged in conflicting directions by your own identity. so many battles lost to greed, showing you ultimate hollowness of power. in retrospect you question yourself, of how you tried to come out of this center, "i sewed in further nodes of connections, like burnt threads only to emerge forty-seven or one hundred pages later."
the dreams of creating new nodes of connection through powers of deduction - i.e; wisdom gained from each of the past cycle can seem like furthering of contrivances and play of symbolic gestures and in effect, reductive; simply because that abandonment of the self did not happen, which echoes the voices of the captive cycle.
that self in front of a mirror, that is held to be the inmost essence of truth, only hears words enacting a certain condescension —“I the mirror, am looking into your mind and see all your inner thoughts, impulses, tendencies, all the conflicting inner desires, delusions, debilitating drives, deeds of shame, suppressed dreams and all the regrets and know them much better than you do (for that reflects ambiguity).” and you cannot break this mirror nor embrace its intimidating reflection, that is being accompanied with blind arrogance of the subtle mind. inaudible condescension is usually present, just underneath the surface, of supposedly the right guide under the guise of friendship. your inner self could truly sense this tone of disconnection and knows that the rhythm which creates harmony in mind & gratefulness in heart is something different; that which your projected identity could not hold it and so you continue to shine the accumulated self in 'mirror of surface'. the flame of millions of suns of your soul cannot be killed, but can stay hidden for long by the enormous clouds. the Heart within feels the music clear♪, soon clouded by invisible walls of the undernourished mind (+ paucity in the mind of different contexts) who riots everything out. it is mind's identity which does not want to belong but occupy, trouncing the heart which always serves. refusal to take on the old ways of seeing, for the mind's identity likes to continue the grip on operational kingdom born of the body ∞⃝.
there is the root to the truth we don't want to see. burning at each end of the body as well as the mind swept, the soul still returns to occupy the body; this body made up of the endless labyrinth of accumulated body of information - threadbare and stained. each transgression to next life, remembered; memories form the triadic waves that bring in tempestuous emotions and brings out tremulous motions of a familiar but a timorous self, in the moment when you hear the rustling noise in the bushes.
"Do not be afraid of your own heart beating
Look at very small things with your eyes
& stay warm" - Bernadette Mayer
this graceful moment was to go out of the frontier of self as well as out of this weariness of mine and courageously come out of all the hiding places so that you enter a central conversation where transformation is possible through a kind glance and graceful intimacy. to be far away from yourself, from your kingdom, so that you are in touch with moments of truth, this divine conversation, the core correspondence, so as to never return back to any indulgent moments, nor be alone again, in the night of indifference. never returning to those answers which created locus of concealment, but sharing heart of those answers which brought to you eternal peace. roaring with laughter for your belief filled to the brim - "some dark chocolate and faith in the poison and you're golden!". theories, speculations, stories, impostures but not seeing that the sun will not just shine only for me!" it was lot about what we enabled when we deliberately looked away from something.
this great meeting, this revelatory moment... when you are gifted to see the abundance within, so beautifully reflected in this kind and compassionate moment. that supreme source of abundance does not destabilize you as you presumed, nor cuts through you; cutting through everything you felt - ignored, impenetrable and disorienting darkness, numbness, isolation, illness, ignorance; nor a self-regard that causes to transgress personal boundaries, but simply forms a connection and takes you Home. this is not that worldly supremacy ushered into prejudice, that only offers you a place in the kingdom whose might is strength in numbers and whose spread is systemic, pervasive, insidious, pernicious and soul-damaging. true supremacy lies in constant offering of selfless love, of everything a soul needs and with great gentleness, offering a forever space in own Heart which is the abode of peace.
listening to that Generous Master Song, you feel the warmth of a loving glow and as your senses calm, your honest prayers glow the words, "Thank You"
When the first rays of the sun kisses Mount Neelkanth.
This breath taking view was observed from Badrinath valley, Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand, India.
Date: 14th October 2021.
Coracias benghalensis (Linnaeus)
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© 2008 Anuj Nair. All rights reserved.
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© 2008 Anuj Nair. All rights reserved.
All images are the property of Anuj Nair.
Using these images without permission is in violation of
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All materials may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished,
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Badrinath travel highlight.Early morning sunshine on Neelkantha peak(6590 mtrs.).Photo taken from GMVN hotel grounds.Please view in large or original.
European Roller (Coracias garrulus). Please do not ask me what the title means, I have absolutely no idea.
Family: Coraciidae
Order: Coraciiformes
Neelkanth peak is located near Badrinath ( one of the holiest shrines for hindus worldover) in Uttarakhand (India). Neelkanth (blue throat) is another name for lord Shiva.
Satopanth glacier, the origin of Alaknanda (one of the two major tributaries of The Ganges), lies north-west of Neelkanth (25 Km trek from the point this picture was taken)
Neelkanth (Alt: 6596 mtrs). (21,640 ft) literally means BLUE THROAT which is another name for The god Shiva.
But here the south west face of the mountain displays another facet during a pinkish sunset as seen from Bedni Bugyal during the Roopkund Trek, in Uttarakhand in the Garhwal Himalayas.
My other photographs of Neelkanth