Flight to Ladakh that landed in Kullu Valley

February 10, 2012 by Himanshu Khagta

After spending half of my winters in Delhi, I realized that its not cold enough. So, I tried to book my tickets to the nearest Hill Station, Leh, the capital of the Ladakh region. Soon I found out that there were no flights for the day I wanted to leave, so I got tickets from Chandigarh instead. So now my journey time was increased by five hours and had join my friends from Kurukshtra as the bus journey takes five hours to reach Chandigarh.

Towards Chandigarh

So we reached Chandigarh airport on time but the check-in counters were closed. We waited. We had our breakfast and then we waited again. There were many flights being delayed because of fog at Chandigarh. The airlines soon sent me a text saying that even our flight was delayed for another hour. Meanwhile, the clock struck 10 and the commodities market opened. Both of my friends got busy in their cellphones and practiced their money making skills. Soon the passengers started getting anxious but we were busy in the ups and lows of the indices. The flight was further delayed for two hours. One of our friend canceled his plan to Leh and went home. After waiting for four hours. The check in counters were opened and we got our boarding passes at 2 pm. We waited again. Finally, we boarded the plane at 2:30 pm and then started our journey to Leh.

The Great Himalayan Mountain Range at Ladakh in Winters (Himanshu Khagta)

Continue reading →

New Design of my Website launched

January 11, 2011 by Himanshu Khagta

Light colored design inspired by snow.

Today, after working for about a week with my friend Rohit Kaundal, I launched the new design for my website. This monochromatic design puts less strain on the eyes and removes all the clutter that was found in the previous version.

Features :

Eye friendly Colors.
‘Where am I ?’ feature that uses Google API to automatically update my Location with my GPS enabled phone.
6 Newly uploaded photos on the main page.
New Blog Article and Latest Articles List on the main page.
Facebook Like button on Articles and photographs.
Buy Prints Button on the Right side of every photographs.

Behind the Scenes :

My childhood friend and neighbor, Rohit Kaundal and I sat together for three or four days to make my website clutter free and make it a better browsing experience for visitors.

I choose the new monochromatic shades of Black and he tried to create a symmetry in the design.

I also required a Where am I ? box that could update automatically with my phone. That was possible with Google Latitude but google didn’t have any text version on their badge. So, Rohit plunged into Google API and created a PHP code that would display my current location through my GPS enabled phone.

Other Details :

Only Ginger – Pepper Tea was used while working.
Lounge Music helped a lot .
Many trips were canceled in the past few days.

Rohit Kaundal helped in the complicated programming of this website

Powerer by :

Theme by Graph Paper Press for wordpress was used as the starting point for this design. The Photo gallery is powered by Photoshelter, the leader in portfolio websites, photo sales, marketing and archiving tools for photographers.

If you also want your photoshelter account then you can get discount of up to 30$ if you use the following discount code or click on this link.

HY7KH5LJ44

Winter Sunrise Trek at Shimla

January 7, 2011 by Himanshu Khagta

As the snow melted in the mountain town of Shimla, which was covered in few inches of snow after many years, I, being accompanied by three of my friends went out to see the morning rays of the sun falling on the city.

It was 6 am in the morning when the phone rang. After ignoring it for some time, I picked it up to hear the happy and enthusiastic voice of my friend Harsh Kalta, who seemed to be impatient and excited at the same time about the trek told me that he had already called Khachi (Ankur Khachi) and he is also geting ready. So, from this point of view, I had no excuses. I had slept for less then an hour, because I helped my friend (Aasheesh Mehta), to design a website about metal. So, I told him to wake up and get ready. He was not in a very good mood and he also had a strong cold.

Around 6 30 am, after meeting Khachi we picked up Kalta and went straight to Tara Devi, a temple situated in front of Shimla, which offers a great view of snow-clad mountains around the town. Strangely, it is impossible to see them from the Ridge of Shimla. We reached the temple and started gazing at the town. the main reason is that some weeks ago when I posted a photography of Shimla ( below ), some ignorant people thought that the mountains never existed because they have never seen it, and said that the mountains have been added by me with a photoshop. I really disliked it. For the people who still don’t believe it. I would advice them to visit Tara Devi and turn your face towards right. Simple. Isn’t it ?

Picture of Shimla with Snow-clad mountains i took last year during sunset

So, we started our trip to a secret location nearby, explored by us last year. Unbelievably, Aasheesh got strenght and got back his natural mood and claimed that he cannot recollect the journey we just did.

We had pur picnic on the cold grass and my friends collected dry wood and lit a fire. I was thinking about the curry rice that is being served in Langar at Tara Devi Temple (MANDHIR) every Sunday and Tuesday. We stood their untill 1 pm when we were sure that the langar was ready for us.

Here are some photographs. Hope you like them.

Cheers!

Winter Sunrise Trek at Shimla – Images by Himanshu Khagta