A quick trip to get some long overdue work done at our cottage in Simla. The view of the Himalayan Range from the air [Dhaka to Delhi] was spectacular, though I could not capture the «spactularness» due to the dirty aircraft windows ...

Little time to photograph the surrounds and birds. That meant I had to be up and out of the house by 7 AM to get an hour before breakfast to get some photographs. The birds in the shrubbery and trees behind my parents home in «Chotta» Simla [Shimla] would wake me and there was no need to set an alarm!  Here are some of the early morning visitors -

   
  

  

Verditer Flycatcher -  Eumyias thalassina;  Himalayan Bulbul - Pycnonotus leucogenys; Streaked Laughingthrush -  Garrulax jerdoni; Bar-Tailed Treecreeper - Certhia himalayana; Green-Backed TIT - Parus monticolus; Lesser Whitethroat - Sylvia curruca;  Great Barbet - Megalaima virens; Oriental White-eye - Zosterops palpebrosus;  Himalayan Bulbul.
See GlobalBirdTrekkers for more.

  

While waiting for the birds, I also took a few photos of the Indian Institute Of Advanced Study [used to be the ViceRegal Lodge], Gorton Castle [which now houses the Accountants General offices] and the Shimla Railway Station from the pathway above the house.

A couple of quick photos of the cottage at Sidhora in Mashobra -
 

Photographs are from September/30/08 to October/04/08.

A couple of photos - the view from our cottage in Mashobra [near Naldehra]  in the Shimla Hills. The mist rolling up the pine forested hills and a nice sunset later that evening.

The cottage on a misty and rainy day ~ Mannat & Jyoti at Mashobra ~ Mannat sketching flowers in the garden at Simla ~ My Mother looking on and giving Mannat the names of the flowers.
  
 

View of the mountains from the cottage ~ Naldehra golf course ~ Simla at Sunset.
  

That came later, the nostalgia.

While looking at some web-stats for this blog today, there was a strange reference in the «uncommon usage» section and so I followed the link to find where from this blog was being linked to. Actually, it was not linked to the web page I am talking about, but to a relatively unknown search-engine. OK, so they crawled my blog and listed it there - no big deal.... I was about to close the window and I stopped because I noticed a pattern, the search page had a lot to do with web pages and blogs with certain key-words only.... SIMLA was one. AhHa!

So I checked out a few of the links and then found two articles from the same website: Early Days and Colonial Boy. Take a browse of the website. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.   And in keeping with this history and nostalgia stuff, here is picture of me and Nita taken by my father with his Yashica Rolleiflex, around 1974 in Tattapani when Nita got engaged. You can see the silver village-style engagement ring[s] on her fingers, bought at a village fair.