Masai Mara trip report

Caracal

Returned from Kenya today after visiting Masai Mara. Even on my fifth trip, the Mara remains captivating, always throwing up something new. In this trip we came across the Caracal , a feline species, for the first time. The animal is larger than a cat but very elusive and difficult to see, but we were lucky to spot it on three days and could create few images of it.

A bow before His Majesty

This time we had a lot of lion viewings, almost every day, a different pride, in a different setting, sunrise, sunset, in different behaviour- playing, eating, chasing zebras, mating and what they like to do most- sleeping.

The red buck below had a flight of his life when he saw six young lions coming down its way. Antelopes and deers are too fast for the lions.

Red buck 

Completed the big five with the lion, leopard, elephant, wild buffaloes and the not so common double horned black Rhino  in the Mara.

Double horned black rhino

But the Mara is not about the big five only, one can never miss the speedy cheetahs, though this time we could not see a cheetah racing for the kill, but did see cheetah mum with her cubs on a recent small kill.

The graceful giraffes span across the Mara plains. These three inquisitive giraffes were having a good look at us as we photographed them. With all wealth of mammal life in the Mara, one often forgets the rich and colourful bird life in the Mara. This pair of Bee eaters could not escape my camera as they perched on this branch.

Cinnamon chested Bee eaters

Baboon with young

 While returning to camp one afternoon came across a bunch of Baboons against the low afternoon light. This young Baboon was having a free ride on his mother's back
 

During the six days in the Mara, I clicked around 3000 images, an affordable luxury with digital cameras. Have screened to a 100 of my choicest images and hope to put them up on my website  in a few days.

All good things must come to an end

With our return from Budapest today, our two week holiday came to an end. During these two weeks, we touched 5 countries- Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Switzerland, using all modes of transport available on land, water and air. It was a wonderful two weeks of fun and photo opportunities. Attached in this blog are few from the Bayern Region of Germany, Champex-Lac in the Valais region of Switzerland and Budapest. Will need some time to sort out the rest for uploading on my photogallery.

Reflections on the Danube, Budapest

View of Budapest from the Citadel

Champex-Lac in the Valais region of Switzerland

Early morning dew-Champex-Lac

From SS Concentration Camp to BMW in 30min

A view of the Nazi SS Concentration camp

A statue in memory of the inmates

View of the BMW HQs in Munich

It takes 30minutes to drive from the infamous Nazi SS Concentration Camp in Dachau to the BMW HQs, factory and museum in Munich. Interestingly, both started functioning in the same year - 1933 (though BMW was established earlier, it started manufacturing cars in 1933). One was to inflict cruelty on fellow humans and depicts the brutality that humans are capable of, and the other is the creativity of the human mind for the betterment of mankind. In a day one can experience both these sides. History teaches us many things, or does it! The "Never Again" promise has been broken many times in many places.

BMW Showroom and Delivery Port

Fireworks at Fete de Geneve

As every year, the Fete de Geneve concluded with a grand display of fireworks.

You can see few of the images in my photogallery

Successfully performed a major transplant surgery

Getting fed up with the small hard disk space (30GB) of the Epson P3000 Multimedia Storage Viewer decided to upgrade the harddisk to 120GB. Since there is no official upgrade had to do it myself. After almost two hours of micro-surgery and software update following the excellent guide written by Julius Lagula the upgrade was successfully completed.

I can now store up to 112GB of image files without running out of space.