Lal Bagh Flower Show, 26th Jan

The Saturday was special, 26th Jan. We hate it when we lose a holiday just because its on a weekend. Well anyway I had enough plans to make sure not even a minute of 26th Jan would be wasted

Plan A was early morning lal bagh

Homework, Local Birds

This time i actually prepared myself.
In last 2 months, I had been to 2 bird sanctuaries and even at Kanwa Dam I saw lots of interesting birds. After my experience with birds at Kanwa dam, I decided to learn recognizing at least a few common birds. I started reading the wiki page on "birds in Bangalore", quite a good starting point for a newbie like me. So, my decision of going to Lal Bagh at early morning was pretty much taken to test my new hobby of bird watching.

Homework, Cycle Lighting

One more thing that i did to prepare myself for the early morning trip to Lal Bagh was to assemble the lighting gears for my cycle. I already had the front light, I designed the rear lights also. It took couple of hours to get it ready. Last time I remember I was riding my cycle at 6am I badly needed a front light and a rear light, as it was very dark on main road . I had bought all components needed to make the rear light long long back, but because of my laziness never managed to complete the circuit. But this time I completed it and finally installed the setup on my cycle and went to sleep at 1am.

Early Morning Cycle Ride

Next day morning I woke up by 5am, got ready and called up afzal to make sure he is awake. I was surprised that he was not only awake but washing his clothes at 6am in the morning. I just messaged hiranya, because i was sure he would not be awake and I did not want to disturb him. I started at around 6am, was excited to test out my new lights.
I was not really sure of how much help the rear light would be, but the front light was also not of much help.

Anyway it was much less darker than i thought. At 6am pretty much there was enough lights and my front light was not needed. I knew the route to Lal Bagh pretty well, since that has been the standard meeting point for most of my long cycle rides. The last time i went on a long cycle tour was when mayuresh was in town. I really miss those 100+ cycle rides, but because of lack of company it has stopped for almost 8-9 months now. Anyway I reached lalbagh by 7am. I saw that the entrance was pretty much crowded already. I thought i would park my cycle inside, but a person stopped me, he said I cannot take the cycle inside. i started reasoning with him, what harm can a cycle do. He was persistent that I cannot park my cycle inside. I could not possibly leave my cycle on the main road. I started losing my temper. I thought what the hell, now a days it is a crime to cycle. no respect. they donot even allow you to park your cycle in a botanical garden in our country. He kept saying go to the other gate. Lal bagh has 3-4 gates. I thought he was just saying that to get rid of me. I was very upset and angry, I thought i had done so much preparation and planning, and everything will be spoiled if I cannot park my cycle safely. I realized this man would not budge, no use of arguing with him, I thought lets take a chance and go to the other gate to see, if they allow cycles there. I remembered an article in paper about no parking of cars near lal bagh on flower show days. I started looking out for other alternatives if i cannot park my cycle inside lal bagh. I went around and reached the west gate of lal bagh. This seemed more crowded. Lots of two wheelers parked here and there. I thought i will lock my cycle along with the railing somewhere here. I started looking for a safe spot, and then I saw the cycle parking stand by BMP. It was awesome, I was cursing these people, but they have actually made a separate parking stand for cycles, which had a pretty impressive design. My mood was back to happy mode. I realized I donot have a single penny in my pocket, if there is ticket i have to go to an atm. But soon I saw, from 6am to 9am there are no tickets. this facility is to promote morning walkers. I was really surprised to see the 7am crowd. Lots of people, everyone in their athletic attire, doing stretching exercises/walking/jogging/running etc etc.

The atmosphere was really charged up with freshness, energy and at the same time calm.  It felt great to see the lake and the 7am atmosphere. Well technically 7am is not early morning, but for me it is the earliest that the morning can get. I took couple of pics which could inspire me to come back here on such early morning weekends more often.

 I started to search for some interesting birds. At the corner there was a small water body, separate from the main lake. there i noticed a couple of birds, the indian cormorant, the little egret, and some other birds which i could not recognize. I realized you need a lot of patience to watch birds. I was lucky to spot a kingfisher. It was almost repeating its pattern of flying back and forth between two branches, waiting on that branch for some time, then plunging into the water to pick up something, could not see what, but hopefully a fish. I took some pictures but my cam was not good enough to get a decent pic.

 After some time, afzal,hiranya,dyut and fahad arrived. It was about 8am, so entry was still free and flower show was supposed to start at 9am. were all amused at the "free" entry thing. We started looking around. Lots of stalls were put up, looked like some kind of fair was going on. Everything from home made honey, juicer, bonsai plants books were on sale. We went on top of a huge rock like thing. Monkeyed around on some trees, lots of pics and time pass. After that the photo session started. All kinds of vegetable plants were on display. hiranya got pretty excited and we took a pic of almost everything. People got restless, saying we can go to a sabji mandi and take as much pics of vegetables as we like.

  After taking a photo of almost whatever was on display, everyone else got frustrated. Then we moved on to some stalls by nursery owners. basically they were selling different kinds of beautiful flowers. ah heaven for shutterbugs. we took macro shots of each and every flower, well almost. And then the most amusing thing happened, afzal's battery got expired. We were all like laughing out loud, afzal was clicking so many shots of vegetables and other things, but when the main purpose of visit to lal bagh was clicking the flower show, his battery ran out. So he tried to disturb us from taking so many shots and also people got tired of waiting for us to finish shooting everything. At  last we took a walk around the lake, and dyut pointed out an interesting thing about cormorants, that they actually can go underwater for quite some time, unlike other ducks. After that we left for home.