A slight bump on a road trip to Sikkim

May 30 2011 under india | Leave a comment

Road trip! It was time for another break from Thimphu. So a few of the guys from the magazine and I hastily threw together some supplies—the trip wasn’t confirmed until 11:00 p.m. the night before our scheduled departure—piled into a car we had borrowed from the office, and made for the mountains of India’s Sikkim province.

We arrived in Gangtok, the region’s capital, long after dark. The rain poured down and while we spent more than an hour searching for a hotel with two vacant rooms, the car’s useless ventilation system kept the windows hopelessly fogged. And of course, it couldn’t be just any guest house we stayed; Mitra, my Butanese buddy at the wheel, insisted we slept at some place run by a friend of a friend’s uncle’s cousin —or something like that.

On the verge of giving up, we stopped a local police officer and asked for directions. That turned out to be a bad decision.

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A must-read guide to the basics of photography

May 16 2011 under caught online | 1 Comment

Today, I came across a really fantastic guide to the basics of photography. It’s a post by a guy named Wasim Ahmad at visual journalism site called Journographica.

The link: Basic Photo Tips: Framing Your Shots.

The tutorial covers such concepts as the rule of thirds, dealing with hotspots, ensuring you’re aware of surroundings and especially backlighting, framing and utilizing unusual perspectives, focal length, catching that perfect moment, and quite a few others.

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Thimphu to Tehran? -Three hours on Google Maps

Apr 22 2011 under bhutan | 1 Comment

Click to enlarge.

I haven’t written here in a while. Between a few different projects that I have on the go, I’ve been crushed under deadlines. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t made time to procrastinate, though.

Anybody who knows me knows that I love to travel and I love to plan trips. I have routes planned for the east coast of Africa, the west coast of Africa, down through the deep south of the United States, up through Kashmir, back and forth across South America -wherever.

Here’s a road trip that a guy here named Kyle and I came up with over a bottle of whiskey. Between a slow internet connection and the fact that Google Maps is utterly useless at calculating routes through any country between India and Turkey (who would have guessed?), that graphic took us three hours to create.

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Playing with cameras at the Mahabodhi Temple

Jan 7 2011 under india | 4 Comments

Eating dinner a few nights ago in Bodhgaya, I overheard the guys next to me going on about the adventures that they’d had taking photographs over the years. I’d been having a bit of a problem with a new lens of mine and so I asked if they would take a look.

The next morning, one of the guys, David, walked into the same little restaurant where I was then eating breakfast and asked if he could join me.

The next thing I knew, I had spent the entire day receiving lessons in photography from a veteran film producer and camera operator for the Discovery Channel.

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To each their own

Jan 6 2011 under india | Leave a comment

These four Swedes were staying at a hostel in Bodhgaya just down the road from me. The photograph was taken inside the Mahabodhi Temple complex, at the foot of a stupa just a hundred feet or so from the tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.

The girl on the right was deep in meditation. The girl on the left was playing a computer game that involved firing a slingshot at monkeys.

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Never trust anybody over 30

Jan 3 2011 under india | 1 Comment

When travelling, I’ve always had good luck with local teenagers. Never trust anybody over 30.

This morning, I found myself trying to get out of a town in northwest India called Bodhgaya. It’s a holy place, sacred to both Buddhists and Hindus. It was under a tree that the town has since been built around that the Buddha attained enlightenment.

I didn’t know that when I was trying to get away from Boddhgaya (Gaya, technically, where the train station is). It was 7:00 a.m. and I wanted to be on my way to Calcutta. But the the man at the ticket window had other ideas. And so like it or not, I was spending the next 13 hours where the last train had left me.

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Back in Delhi

Jan 1 2011 under india | 6 Comments

Back at the Navrang for $3.00 a night. Back to its peeling walls and stained pillows and blankets that are filthy to touch. The Navrang’s rooms have always reminded me of the kind of place that Colonel Kurtz would have stayed before he descended into madness on his way up the Nung River.

Out the ally and across the street, it’s back to the rooftop restaurant that I’ve eaten at so many times before. Eggs, potatoes, toast, and a coffee for $2.50. And a decent view looking down Main Bazaar, to the crowded streets and millions of colours, smells, and faces, four stories below.

Delhi took a while to grow on me. But it did.

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