Central Valley, Zanskar. A rare reasonable day. Quite a lot of hopefuls invaded Zanskar over the centuries but none made it stick for long. The place is really hostile, a full blown alpine climate, crossing glaciers and rockfall, minus 45C in the deep winters. A very specialised environment with a quite faithfully preserved cultural character to the small, highly adapted human population - around 15,000 or thereabouts. They have been ignored by India for decades but ironically, the looming India-China conflict zone has prompted the army to build a lot of Himalayan roads, including a cross-Zanskar access road. It's intended to be a proper bitumen high construction two laner, rather unusual in India. BRO and HIMANK have pulled their finger out too, it may be open for people like me later this year. (maybe with a little official baksheesh in the form of 'special permits' etc.) Last two images show where the road has to traverse, there is about 150 kms of this kind of countryside.
We are definitely in the Monsoon season. Last night pretty much solid overcast with a bit of precipitation but no wind. This Morning it looked like this.
One circular break in the clouds.
The Santa Fe to Española area covered by a solid fog layer.
Another foggy cloud layer in front of the Jemez Mountains.
The cloud cover lasted all day and kept temperatures comfortably low.
This Evening's view.
Looking at a Great Blue Heron in breeding plumage.
Cropped, tripod mounted 200-600mm set to 300mm and A7rIII; silent shutter.
ISO 100, f6.3, 1/200 second.
Exposure Corrected -0.10 Stops.
January 6, 2020
At Gatorland, Orlando or Kissimmee, FL.
Few more shots from the lotus garden in Sunday. The garden has a good variety of lotus flowers, white, pink, white and pink. A similar shot of the first one in B&W was posted before but it's a different shot in the same sequence.
The last I saw of the modern world was a week before this time, back in Delhi with its 30 million inhabitants and life-threatening PM10 levels. The joy of being so far away from 'civilisation' is something hard to express in words.
