Brief of shoot:
"Way to Honey Valley" - That was the only visible thing at 5 a.m when we ( myself,subash,dhammi,ganesh) reached the Kabinakkad junction.It was pitch dark ,terribly cold and very less signal in our mobiles. We could not ring the honey valley guys or the rest of the BWS guys who had reached the previous night.All we could do was sit at that small lonely bus stop and wait for it to get bright.It was completely silent and many things were running in my mind like,"is this trip worth all the effort", "are we safe in this place?","is that the sound of a leopard approaching us or is it subash snoring?".Thanks to the other group who arrived sometime later to give us some company and disturbed the silence for sometime until the light came out.
The honey valley guys picked us up after a while and took us through the steep roads into their estate.It was an amazing display of natural beauty. Something so beautiful that it could pull anyone out of his tiredness and get him geared up. The cottage was all distributed at different levels on one side of the valley with coffee plantations on the other side and a small stream in between. It would be the best spot for any nature photographer to click thousands of shots.
We met the rest of the guys at the dormitory,got ready, finished our breakfast and then it was all set for capturing the greatest moments. I could see all the photographers distributed around the cottage trying everything possible in photography dictionary.Flowers,insects,birds,mountains,...the list goes on. We decided to trek through one of the routes to reach the hill top. Thought we could spot a few birds but couldn't find many. There was an excellent view of the tadiyandamoll peak and other hills surrounded by the misty clouds.A small chat after that (needless to mention the topic was all about photography) and a group snap using subbu's gorillapod.
We came back to the cottage for lunch,had a wonderful meal with chicken and pork and then took an adventurous and breathtaking jeep ride to one of the hills to click the sunset. We could not click much of sunset because of the dense clouds but managed some very good shots of the rays sneaking through the clouds to reach the mountains.
Back home that evening , it was time for another yummy meal followed by campfire. I don't think anyone was much interested in getting warm. Everyone was 10 feet away from the fire with their tripod set, trying to click every possible fire pattern. :)
The next day the 4 bikers (avijit,vinu,akg and jain) left the cottage after breakfast. They had plans of covering bailakuppe on the way. Rest of us explored the coffee estate for a few more images. We came back for lunch and 4 of us left to madikere and headed to abbe falls while venkatesh and apoorva stayed back at honeyvalley to enjoy the evening.
I am sure that everyone is still in the honey valley mood even after reaching Bangalore. Its certainly an amazing place and I wouldn't mind taking another 50 trips there. Thanks to BWS and a big thanks to iceoverrock for suggesting this spot.
I guess the would describe the scenes better than my report.
