stories
India
we like playing with your camera......
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We arrived at Periyar national park around mid afternoon for our 4pm
boat tour around the lake and first encountered the “wild” monkeys in and
around the car park and entrance. A great sight, but these crafty blighters
have obviously learnt some tricks; whilst mothers and babies pose and
play willingly for the onlookers, the others rifle through bags and pockets
looking for tasty snacks – we saw one making off with a rucksack and a
man frantically chasing it.
Our time had come to board a boat and walked towards it down a
long rubble ramp, and were hoarded onboard but then ushered through
the boat and across to a smaller ramshackle boat full up with Indian
people and our party of four were the only foreigners.
The boat departed and chugged along a narrow meandering channel because of the
low water level of the lake and we soon came across a school of young
otters playing at the bank side. I left my seat to find a better shooting
position and fired off a burst of frames. After passing the otters I started
reviewing the images on the viewing screen and soon an Indian man
asked if he could see the pictures which I gladly showed him. This then
caused a stir of interest amongst the other Indian passengers and I soon
had a friendly crowd around me asking to see the pictures and one person
asked to have a look through the lens and I tried to explain that if he pushed
the shutter button half way down it would auto focus and appear sharp.
I think something got lost or misunderstood with my guidance as suddenly
this guy had his finger jammed down on the shutter release firing off about
30 shots of heads, feet, ears etc before I could prise his finger off the button
and I spent the next few minutes deleting !!!
The Indian passengers had obviously got used to me around them now and
for the rest of the cruise they acted as my spotters with everybody calling out
“Mr Mr ” everytime anything of interest was seen near the boat
Great memories !!!
Mike