Most of the time when I want to travel or indulge in photography, I prefer to hit the hills. Somehow they never fail to attract me. Armed with my camera, I just need a reason to escape to the hills. I started early morning on one fine day for one such trip. After photographing the first rays of the sun and a few landscapes in the crisp chilling weather of autumn, hunger struck me. Was it because I could smell something nice being cooked at a small roadside shack? Maybe that this was exactly what was needed for the famished photographer.

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A rainy Sunday morning. Four of us gathered up early in the morning for a planned photowalk. Yesterday evening, we had thought of going for an early morning outing. Rain or no-rain, the photowalk was still ‘on’. We were not going to let a few drops downpour spoil our plans. Packed with our photography gear and umbrellas, we all started off for our destination while the day was still breaking out. With an overcast sky, the photography was going to be nice, provided the rains stopped a little. The destination? A mountain stream that should be nicely flooded at this time of the year.

(Cascading mountain stream – this is the place we wanted to visit)

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With the monsoon season, well advanced, rains have taken their hold on the hills of Kumaon. The persistent cloud cover and high humidity gets quite depressing after a time. It also happens to my late grandmother’s birthday, who I was very fond of.

After a week of almost incessant rains, today, the weather cleared up a little. It was not raining but the sky was still overcast. The diffused light from overcast sky is what I needed for a photograph I had in mind. Armed with my camera, I once again set out to photograph some more cascades that appear with the rains.

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With the onset of monsoons, the nature starts to reinvent itself. The trees turn green. New leaves every where. Mountain streams start filling up and many small cascades and waterfalls appear. Yesterday the incessant rain took a short break. I immediately hit the road with my camera, tripod and a few snacks to munch on.

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With the onset of monsoons, when the tourists start to diminish on the hills, the corn sellers start to appear on the road sides. They harvest maize grown in their fields on the hill sides and sell the fresh corn-cobs in their roadside shacks. Traveling on a rainy day, when hunger struck me, this is where I stopped.

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With the end of summer season round the corner, Natadol, a small laid-back village in Kumaon organized a summer festival. The people of Kumaon are very proud of their heritage and culture and this event was an ideal platform to showcase that. The three day festival had all the villagers coming together, participating and putting forth three days of simple yet engaging performances. I was lucky enough to be a part of this festival and witnessed the culture of Kumaon from within.

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