Ranthambhore

I’ve uploaded the final installment of my little India Trilogy. This time it's wildlife in Ranthambhore National Park in the midst of Rajasthan's heat and dust. Ranthambhore is a huge park dominated by a 10th century fort that gives the park its name. It's loaded with wildlife. Langur monkeys are prevalent as well as two species of deer, Sambar and White Spotted, and some Indian Antelope are present in smaller numbers. But the big draw in the park is the Tiger. It's one of the best places in India to see them, though sightings are not guaranteed and sometimes very far away. With that in mind, I was hopeful that in five days I would manage to get at least a sighting or two, but I was quite fortunate to have sightings on 4 of my 5 days there, and a couple fairly close.

You can watch the embedded version of the video in my website, or see it directly on my Vimeo channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/ranthambhore.

Enjoy!

Cloud Bound

This is the second of my three little India videos. In this episode, I'm cloud bound high in the Himalayas on the border between India and Nepal. Actually, quite a bit of this was filmed in Nepal, but India was just on the other side of the trail. Since I was besieged by clouds that left me in a whiteout for a few days, the only option I had was to shoot some Time Lapse scenes of the clouds flowing up the valleys below and over the ridge tops. This part of the world looks remarkably like my home turn in the Oregon Cascade Mountains. Just a little bit higher. Much of this was filmed at an altitude that would be about 1000 ft above the summit of the tallest mountain in Oregon. In the end, I did finally have a couple hours of clear skies in Darjeeling and was able to see the section of the Himalayas I had come to view. The tallest of the mountains in those scenes is called Kangchenjunga, and is the third highest mountain in the world (behind Mt. Everest and K2).

You can see the video in the Travel tab on this website, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/darjeeling

Sacred Ganga

I've just finished three short videos of my Indian Subcontinent transit. I've split this into three parts because each region is so vastly different from the others. I'll upload them, one a day, over the next three days.

This first video covers my visit to Varanasi. The Ganga River (Ganges for westerners), India's most sacred river, flows past Varanasi and is a pilgrimage destination for Hindus. They come to bathe in the Ganga, and they also come, if they can manage it, at the end of their life to have their ashes spread on the waters. A series of stone steps, called Ghats, line the river frontage and early every morning crowds come to pray and bathe in the sacred waters.

You can see the video in the Travel tab on this website, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/varanasi

Demo Reel

I've just finished a new Demo Reel for the website of one of my agents. For those of you who don't know what a "Demo Reel", it is a short edit of sample footage used to show examples of the kind of work you do. They are the functional equivalent of a portfolio that a still photographer might show to potential clients. I decided that since I spent the time putting it together, it might as well not languish on the agency's website on my profile page, so here it is. It is a broad mix of both wildlife footage (the Above part) and underwater footage (the Below).

You can view the video on this website in the Wildlife tab, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at www.vimeo.com/fishtales/demo

Hope you enjoy it.

Samburu Video

Well, now with the publication of the Samburu video, I’m caught up on the African locations. Samburu National Park lies in Northern Kenya. It's home to some rare species that are quite difficult to fine elsewhere. You can see the beautiful Grevy's Zebra is good numbers. They are larger than the Common Zebra and have much finer black pinstripes that are gorgeous. You can also see Reticulated Giraffe at Samburu, in my opinion, the most attractive Giraffe species. There are lots of Antelope species including the uncommon Gerenuk that looks like a cross between an Impala and a Giraffe and the Oryx with it's majestic long straight horns. The park's scenery is also stunning with tall surrounding hills, steep canyons and the Ewaso Ng'iro river running through it. The river is actually to border to Buffalo Springs National Park, and you can crisscross back and forth between the two. Most of this video was filmed in Samburu, but at least 25% is from Buffalo Springs. All three big cat species are present in the park and there are lots of Elephants with a unique red coloration caused by dusting themselves in the reddish soil.

You can view the video in the “Wildlife” tab of this website, or directly on my Vimeo channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishtales/samburu

One Last India Story

This is a story about my last 2 hours in India. I probably should have told this story the day I arrived in Bangkok, but I was too busy kissing the ground. It’s a story of the Calcutta International Airport which just may be the most inept airport I’ve ever been through. Now first, let me say that I’m all for good airport security, even when the procedures are a bit mystifying, but trying to keep us safe is a good thing. And also let me say that all of the people I encountered in this story were kind and friendly and just doing their job as dictated by a committee of moronic bureaucrats.

I arrived at the airport with plenty of time, and in very good spirits. I am, after all, trading India for Thailand. What’s not to be happy about? I found my airline check-in counter, and after a few minutes wait, they tell me that I have to go back to the entrance and have my baggage x-rayed. Well, that could have been organized a little better. Even Indonesia manages to get everyone’s baggage x-rayed as they enter the terminal. There are two x-ray machines, one with no line, one with a long line. I go to the one with no line. Different Airline, they can’t x-ray me. My airline is the one with the long line. The line is long because one guy has to affix a cable tie to every bag that comes through, and then affix a security sticker to the cable tie. He’s obviously getting paid by the hour, so he’s in no hurry. So I finally get through the x-ray and back over to the check in line, and it goes smoothly the second time through.

Now it’s time to go through Immigration. At the start of the cue to get stamped out, an official looks at my passport and boarding pass and lets me move into the line. The line is not too long, maybe 20 or 30 people. In the middle of the line, another person checks my passport and boarding pass. I get to stay in the line because apparently I’m still the same person and on the same flight that I was a couple minutes ago when the first guy checked. Maybe he messes up sometimes and they can’t fire him because he’s civil service. I get to the head of the line, and ANOTHER person checks my passport and boarding pass. Yep, I’m still OK, so I get to go to a window and see an actual Immigration officer. I give him my passport and boarding pass. The passport is open to the page that has my visa stamp in it, because I know that it is one of two pages in the passport that he actually needs to see. The other page being my picture and info which is always at the front of a passport and pretty easy to find. He immediately closes the passport, then opens it and starts looking for my visa. After a couple minutes, he finds it (my passport is very thick with at least a hundred visas in it). He says “Ooooh, a Visa On Arrival” (see Mumbai blog post). He stamps my passport, and stamps my boarding pass in two places. I guess that’s so I can have a souvenir of the stamp after they tear off the stub of my boarding pass. I’m through Immigration, onward to security.

Now I’ve been through airport security with my camera and computer gear a LOT of times, so I sort of know the drill. The computer is going to need to come out and go through on its own. In some airports, my iPad needs to come out too, but not always. So I take my computer out of my big Cinebag backpack and put it in a tray on the conveyer. I ask if I need to take my iPad out of my small shoulder bag, the guy says no, so I put that small bag in another tray. Then the guy asks if I have any cameras in the backpack. I said “well, yes I do, it is a camera bag, after all”. He says to open it. I do and he proceeds to take out everything, cameras, lenses, chargers, batteries, literally every single item in the backpack and lumps it all into one tray. Last time I checked, x-rays went through fabric pretty well. He converted something that was neatly spaced out and easy to see on an x-ray into a huge blob of stuff that I suspect was pretty indecipherable. Then he checks my boarding pass and passport. So I sent through the metal detector, and I didn’t set it off because everything I own is in the x-ray machine. Then as I’m repacking all of said possessions, another guy comes along to check my boarding pass and passport.

I was planning on changing my remaining Indian Rupees into Thai Bhat before going to my gate, but there is no currency exchange in the Airport. There is actually NOTHING in the Airport. No cafe’s, restaurants, duty free shops, news stands, or souvenir shops to compete for the last of your Rupees. There was one food kiosk (think street food card) that I wouldn’t have patronized if I was starving. So the Rupees would have to wait for exchange in Bangkok (which turned out to be a better choice anyhow).

Now it’s time to get on the plane. They use the stampede seating method that is so widely popular in India. At the entrance to the jetway, someone is checking your passport and boarding pass. OK, you expect it here. Halfway down the jetway, another person was checking boarding passes and passports. I didn’t see that one coming. And at the doorway to the aircraft another person (not flight crew, just some other bozo), was checking boarding passes and passports. That’s three checks in 100 ft. If you’ve lost count of the boarding pass/passport inspections, let me recap for you. Line to immigration = 3, Immigration = 1, Security = 2, Boarding the plane = 3. That’s nine people that had to look at my boarding pass and passport in order to get out of India. It was worth it!

Bangkok Street Food

One of the great things about Bangkok is the FOOD! And I’m not just talking about the Thai food which is scrumptious and very cheap. You can get just about any kind of food you want to eat in Bangkok. Today, I suddenly had a hankering for a big juicy bacon cheeseburger. I could think about several nice restaurants that could surely scratch that itch, but as I was riding on the BTS with nothing much to do between stations, I googled “best Bangkok burger” on my iPhone and found a review of the “10 Best Burgers In Bangkok”. They all sounded good, but the one that intrigued me was the Daniel Thaiger Food Truck. So I decided to give it a try, and it was excellent (and a very good value).

The Bacon Cheeseburger is called the “Mr Steve”. Seems like fate, doesn’t it?


And it tastes as good as it looks!


Several other Americans stopped by for their burger fix while I was there, and the staff of the food truck greeted them by name and asked if they wanted their “usual”. I’m seriously thinking about renting an apartment on this street next time I come to Bangkok:<)

Rhino Time

Now that I’m settled in to an apartment in Bangkok for a short break, it’s time to catch up on some post production. I just finished an edit of some of the Scenes from Ol Pejeta Conservancy. As a brief recap, Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Northern Kenya has one of the highest concentrations of rhinos remaining in Africa. I used to recommend Lake Nakuru for Rhinos, but when it was hit by a big flood a little over a year ago, all of the White Rhinos in the park were moved to Ol Pejeta for safety and I suspect they will remain here. The Conservancy is privately owned and managed and is very aggressive in it's protection of endangered species such as White Rhino, Black Rhino, Reticulated Giraffe and Grevy's Zebra. The conservancy is huge, rivaling the size of some of the National Parks which is pretty amazing when you consider that it is privately owned and the entrance fees to visit aren't really very much more than the Kenyan Parks System fees. I filmed around 300 scenes during my visit and nearly half of them were Rhinos. The Conservancy is located in the shadow of Mt. Kenya, the second highest peak in Africa. In addition to Rhinos, I had some nice Lion encounters including a couple of feedings. This is the only game park on my entire tour that I didn't film a single Elephant! I saw some. There apparently is a pretty good sized population. But with so many rhinos around, I just didn't put much of a priority on the other big gray guys.

You can watch the film in the “Wildlife” tab of this site, or directly on my Vimeo Channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishfales/ol-pejeta

Bangkok

I’m back in Civilization! After 3 weeks in India, Bangkok is like an oasis of cleanliness and order. No huge piles of garbage in the streets with cows grazing in them. No Camels or Goats wandering in the streets. There’s good food everywhere and I understand what all of it is and what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m planning on staying here at least a month to catch up on media management.

No more enforced vegetarianism for me. My first Bangkok meal, a full rack of Tony Roma’s Carolina Honeys:


All that’s left is Dem Bones:

Calcutta

I took an overnight train to Calcutta that was supposed to at 2100, and miracle of miracles, it actually did pull out exactly on time. Even more surprising, it actually arrived in Calcutta only 10 minutes behind schedule. That’s the first train I’ve taken in India that wasn’t at least 2 hours late. One of the things that I was going to visit was the famous “Black Hole of Calcutta”, but as soon as I arrived at the train station, I mentally checked that off my list. I figured, why bother, can’t be any better than this. The street my hotel was on is in a fairly nice part of town. The street outside the hotel wasn’t terribly grungy for at least a couple blocks. Then it becomes a junkyard, quite literally. Vendors have taken over about a quarter mile of the sidewalk to sell all kinds of used car parts. You can barely walk through the hub caps, radiators, suspension parts, transmissions and towers of used tires (spelt tyres here). Then as suddenly as it started, it switches into a few blocks of fancy little girls dresses, then a stretch of men’s underwear. Mixed in amongst all of this are dozens of little naked boys begging for coins. Then occasionally, in the midst of all the chaos, you come across some nice neat little shop selling something normal like birthday cakes.

Obviously no zoning problems with city officials. This sidewalk has literally been converted into a junkyard. on one side they are boilng out old radiators, on the other side boiling lunch:


Here you can buy used tires of all shapes and sizes and get a snack too:


I’m not touching the street food here. I don’t really even trust the restaurants:


Here’s a drive-in fruit stand Calcutta style:


In the category of “I can’t make up stuff this good”, this politician is suggesting that farmers should collect their urine to water their crops that are dying due to the current drought conditions. Well, I guess if everybody pitched in, instead of peeing in the streets, it might be a drop in the bucket. I’m sure the farmers, who are committing suicide in record numbers do to crop failures, really appreciate a rich politician in Delhi telling them to just piss on it: