Kamikochi : Autumn

I guess Lady luck knocks my door only on weekends : got an invitation from sahu for a drive down to kamikochi the following day, I had no reason to say NO. Last time I been to this place was on 19Aug`03. Kamikochi tends to be busier than Shinjuku around the peak summer. This is one of the starting points for hiking and trekking the Japan Alps.

We started off around 9:30AM. The route had vivid autumn colors,it scores over the Akazawa route that I been to last weekend.Enroute we made a couple of stops, there were a mutitude of streams that were flowing down the valley on either sides.


It took under 2hrs for the 65Kms drive. Well its a bit tricky out here vehicles are not allowed till the base.We needed to park at Suwando parking area and then take a Bus (to and fro costed: 1800Yen ~15USD). The weather was reported to be overcast and late in the afternoon its suppose to rain.

Finally when we set foot at the base the weather nothing better than forecasted.So I was not able to shoot those icon shots, thereby stuck to closeups and macro photography.I picked up the trail which I missed out last time. A sunny day would have made the river Azusa reflect green all around but it looked muddy(courtesy:overcast).

One of the sign boards drew my attention, which has some kind of a moss over it. It really awed me. I walked around it for some time and then called for a Macro shot, since I had one 70-300mm Sigma lense that I borrowed from Anand and it having a Macro support at 300mm. Incompatibility walked its way between the lense and the camera so I docked on to the tripod and switched to manual focus just to hope that it should work. But even my best efforts gave me a blurred shot. May be my best is not good enough for the combination. yup need to work on this later.

We had lots of japanese company and these people out shine themselves when it comes to courtesy. One gentleman asked us if we need a group shot and here we go. If I start writing about Japanese then it will bloat like Leo Tolstoy`s "War and Peace".Anyway some day I will do that for sure.

The acids in the stomach were taking their toll so we perched on the banks of Azusa(well the super fast train that runs from Tokyo to Nagano Prefecture is named after this river `Azusa`).Since all I carried was my photo-gear and a bottle of H2O, so decided to be the scavenger of the day, but I went luck to relish some good Sambar Idly , Kheer and some Pakoda. I guess I ate more than I can. Thanks to Sahu and Gunjan. During the course of luch the rain gods had some fun. I packed up my gear and the lowepro all weather bag came handy.

(click to enlarge)
We moved on for the destination of the day "Kappabashi bridge". It was pouring down. When I confronted another gamut of autum colors I couldnt stop myself from pulling the D70 out in the rain and it gave me the shot of the day.

We relaxed for a while and called it off for the day at 4PM.All in all it was a satisfying day.Now enough of this blogging stuff I need to getback to my studies offlate I am going all gaga with photography, need to strike a balance.