Well, before I continue, Happy 1st Anniversary to BPW 

14 of us turned up for the photowalk that morning.  We had decided to take the Guntur Passenger train starting from Yeshwantpur Railway Station and get down at Hindupur and then take a bus/auto to Lepakshi. The train started at 8:10am and as it slowly increased its pace, our adventurous journey also started. Few of them put their fingers to work (started to click) while few opened their huge lenses (scaring people around them ) and few of our stomachs, started to grumble for breakfast. Including me

Beggers, chai wallahs, idly-wada wallahs, madur-wade wallahs, passed by, as we tried to ignore their uniquely weird tones each one was blessed with. Sheesh! I literally took my iPod out, raised the volume to MAX, yet those tones made it in to my ears. I couldn’t help it anymore. We reached Hindupur a 10:40am and decided to break our fast before we headed to Lepakshi. After a lot of searching, we finally found one small hotel. Masala Dosa, Idly and Vegetable Pulao (the raita was stale ) awaited us.

We were done with our breakfast and now, our next challenge was to travel 15kms to Lepakshi. It was a very hot, sunny Sunday and travelling in a crowded bus was merely impossible. SRK of our group, Natesh (check out his DP on Flickr to know why we call him SRK), blew a powerful whistle at a Matador asking the driver to stop it and the driver did stop it. After all it was SRK’s whistle The driver said that he would drop us to Lepaskshi by charging 6 bucks per person. Hell! We wouldn’t mind if we had paid 10 bucks also, coz it was thousand times better than boarding a bus. The ride was shaky, bumpy and best of all, fun

We reached Lepakshi in about 25mins. We left our footwear at the entrance and walked inside. The temple was huge and what we learned was the most interesting part of the temple – The pillars inside the temple were originally hanging before the British came over and filled it with cement as they thought the temple might collapse. Like, they had the most brilliant brains on earth
It is said that, a British engineer wanted to learn how the temple was supported by pillars and hence tried to move  one of the pillars. It caused some movement and hence you can notice a crack on the ceiling near that particular pillar. The temple had such brilliant architecture, that it could withstand even an earthquake. No wonder, that moron Britisher tried to move and explore it.

All of scattered inside and started clicking. After spending 2.5hrs inside the temple, we decided to take a group photo and a small break before we proceeded towards Nandi. Meantime, Arvind (who is now the official Director of BPW ) showed us some of his brilliant stop-motion skills. After the break, we walked out of the temple and boosted up our energies by having some yummy cucumbers and ice-cream, though it wasn’t sufficient enough.

We headed to Nandi which is just 200 meters away from the temple. Nandi is yet another master piece that is made out of a single granite stone. We were pretty tired and had absolutely no strength. So, after spending only a few minutes at Nandi, we walked back and decided to go back to the railway station by auto. We were told that there’s a train at 3:15pm, but we realized that we were misguided and the next train was only at 6pm when enquired at the station. Hence, we decided to board a bus and headed towards the bus stand in the same auto. We were lucky enough as we got a KSRTC bus heading to Bangalore immediately. Exhausted, we reached Majestic Bus Stand by 6pm and bidding adieu, all of us headed back home.

Overall, the photowalk was fun, exciting, not to forget the bumpy ride and a great experience. You can view our all our pics here – BPW Group Pool

Here are some points to note down if you’re going to Lepakshi:

• Train tickets – 16/head – Guntur Passenger train, scheduled at 8am from Yeshwantpur Station.
• Carry water bottles.
• Carry some eatables. Fruits recommended. You should be very lucky enough to find something to eat.
• Bargain with auto guys. They usually charge 10 bucks/head.

P.S. Group pic shot by Nishanth and Arvind.

Click here for high resolution image

And that’s not it! I was on Times of India too! That’s a huge thing for me We are a group on Flickr called Bangalore Photo Walk (BPW) and we host weekend photo walks in and around Bangalore. I happened to contact Nirmala, a journal at TOI and introduced our BPW group to her. She shared all the details with the Editor and the Editor asked me to form a group of 6 and asked the 6 of us go to different places in Bangalore and capture some interesting shots at the same time. In the sense, we were supposed to go to different places individually and click some shots at one particular (same) time. The time and the place was all our choice. So, we planned on it and decided to go on 23rd July, 2009 (It was my mom’s birthday that day ). We started our walk at 10:30am in the morning and completed it by 12 noon. Unfortunately, one out of the 6 dropped coz of unavoidable conditions and we were only 5 of us.

Now, the real work started! We had to choose 1 best shot out of all the shots we had captured. Everyone did it and sent it to me. In turn, I forwarded the-best-chosen shots to Nirmala with a brief write-up about us…And it is today, July 29th, our shots were published on page 16 in the Times of India, Bangalore edition \m/

Image credit: Zeeshan Imam Chowdhury

And yes, I’m still on cloud9