Kesin completes a Decade

It is been a decade since I left the corporate world to pursue my passion for travel and wildlife photography. The past decade went by in a flash and has been one rollercoaster of a ride. Looking back, nothing in this world would have made me miss this journey.

In the last 10 years, I travelled all across the country, covered 7 of the 9 UT’s and 21 of the 28 states, from Somnath in the West to Kolkata in the East and Leh in the North to Rameswaram in the South.

Somnath in the west

Kolkata in the east.

Leh in the north

Rameswaram in the south.

Even though my journey has been primarily to wildlife sanctuaries, I also travelled to photograph Temples, Monuments, Citiscapes, Nature, Night skies, Festivals, Cultural events, eclipses and people.

Temples

Monuments

Cityscapes

Nature

Night Photography

Festivals

Ganesh Chaturthi, Mumbai

Durga Puja-Kolkata

cultural events.

Jallikattu- Tamil Nadu

Ganga Aarthi- Varanasi

Ganga Aarti -Rishikesh

Eclipses

People

It has been my endevour to try and travel to at least one country every year and have managed to visit 8 countries in 10 yrs. Had the pandemic not not wreaked havoc in 2020 and 21, the number would have been higher for sure.

Tanzania–2013

Kenya-2015

Botswana-2017

Italy–2017

Mongolia–2017

Brazil-2019

Bhutan-2019

Zimbabwe

I also did a solo motorcycle trip in 2015 covering 6000 kms from Mumbai to Leh and back, my best, bravest and most foolish decision of my life. I would not have the guts to undertake another solo trip again, but it was one of self-discovery and learning.

I am not an avid trekking enthusiast but I do love the mountains and it is this affinity to the mountains that has pushed me to go on a few high altitude treks with my trekking partners Kalyan and Ravi.

Gandala pass trek–2015

Chadder Trek–2016

Parangla trek-2018

Stok Kangri trek-2019

Had to abandon this trek midway because of bad weather .

I have been fortunate and blessed and always wanted to give back to society and nature. In the last 10 years I have tried to do the same in my own small way.

My friends and I founded an NGO “Saucam Foundation” to help educate the Rural girl child. We wanted to make a rural schools a bright and fun place to go to and also wanted the schools to have clean and hygienic toilets. Our first project was to build a toilet block in a school in Gursale a village near Satara. We found that there is a big percentage of girls dropping out of school after class 7 and the reason attributed to it was lack of toilets in the school. We managed to build a new toilet block and post that we were happy to learn that the dropouts reduced substantially .

The old & new toilets in the school

The next project was at Pale an adivasi village near Dhanu about 100 kms from Mumbai. where we took up infrastructure improvement, distributing stationery for the last 4 years,² installed E-learning software and trained teachers in alternative teaching techniques .

In Aug 2018 three of my tiger photos were chosen to be exhibited at the Royal Albert hall in London.

My dear friends Claire & John Brooking, who live in the UK, were kind enough to travell all the way to London to see the Exhibition and they shared these photos .

I also managed to tick two things on my Bucket list this decade.

A Visit to Siachen Base Camp

Bungee jumping from the Victoria falls bridge over the river Zambezi

Some of my favourite non tiger clicks in the last 10 years.

I visited most of the Tiger Reserves in India and was fortunate to spot a tiger in all of them except in the Sunderbans, where the striped cat has evaded me.

Mudumalai Tiger Reserve

Nagarahole Tiger Reserve (Kabini)

Bandipur Tiger Reserve And National Park

Tadoba-Andhari National Park

umred pauni karhandla Gothangao Wild Life Sanctuary

Pench National Park

Bandhavgarh National Park

Ranthambore National Park

Dudhwa National Park

Pilibhit Tiger Reserve

Jim Corbett National Park

Kaziranga National Park

Sundarban National Park

Here is what i have to show after 7 visits in 10 years to the Sundarbans