Monday Walk

Relax your body, Relax your mind

/ Rupali / 26 Comments
View from my room

After Trondheim next destination was a lovely hotel in a costal village. This last week was quite hectic. Almost everyday my calender and time sheet was marked with travel codes. Meeting new people, absorbing new ideas is not a leisure activity. One has to invest time and energy in such meetings unless they are planning to retire quite soon 😜

One day after long sessions I decided to take a walk along the beautiful fjords even though the hotel provides excellent indoor pool facilities. I wanted to be out in nature and feel the fresh air. We got some free time before official dinner.

Everything looks promising after a dull day. The weather god is sending puzzles on our way most of these days.

Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health. Dalai Lama 

The Dusk
This was taken during one of the breaks

From my Instagram page

Six Word Saturday

Jos Monday Walk

Spring: Time to recommit healthy habits

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After a week or more of cold, gray, windy and wet days, we were surprised by a cold yet sunny weekend. Even our weather forecast department couldn’t not have clear words. Who could blame them when weather decides to play a prank on all of us.

Once the weekend chores were over I decided to pack a simple lunch and leave for a nice hike. And yes I changes my earlier plan. In this part of the world nature direct our plans, we obey 😊.

Everything was perfect until this point as I realized I was wearing regular Ecco gore-tex shoes and didn’t have spikes with me. I got little panic but decided to proceed with a thought to return back, just in case.

The trails on the south-west side of the mountains were mostly clear but not this way. I had to be cautious as I go upward for who knows what was waiting ahead.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour. ~ Eckhart Tolle

I rested near this spot and ate my peanut butter sandwich. Also called my husband to show him what he missed. He was in his office. There were lot of people relaxing and having fun on the top of the mountain. The weather was ultimate.

Fortunately I managed the slippery sections on both the sides. Something I learned about myself, I can walk/slide on ice 😊. Point noted for future. In all I covered 13.5 km distance with 568 m elevation and used 970 calories.

Jos Monday Walk

I wanted to talk about the books I am reading but it’s already a long post. Rest in next.

Got our dose of sunshine today

/ Rupali / 49 Comments

“THE WEATHER OF LOVE”

Love
Has a way of wilting
Or blossoming
At the strangest,
Most unpredictable hour.
This is how love is,
An uncontrollable beast
In the form of a flower.
The sun does not always shine on it.
Nor does the rain always pour on it
Nor should it always get beaten by a storm.
Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,
And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.
Water it.
Give it plenty of sunlight.
Nurture it,
And the flower of love will
Outlive you.
Neglect it or keep dissecting it,
And its petals will quickly curl up and die.
This is how love is,
Perfection is a delusional vision.
So love the person who loves you
Unconditionally,
And abandon the one
Who only loves you
Under favorable
Conditions.
― Suzy Kassem, 

Differences we may have many but never when it comes to go out for a walk. My husband suggested an early walk today as sunshine was promised 😍 We started after having a little breakfast. We had a fantastic walk and were greeted by many fellow walkers. People not always notice others while shopping but on the mountains smiles are always exchanged. We came back in a happy mood after two hours. With lunch, I made cold coffee. My way of thanking my better half for a fanstastic walk.

Here is a short clip from the walk

Jos Monday walk

Six Word Saturday

When weather whispers “enjoy the silence”

/ Rupali / 46 Comments

A coincidence that my choice for weekend post matches the theme for lens artists photo challenge. Though I was not inside the whole time in January, I didn’t get good opportunities to share my walks. On last Thursday and Friday I was able to take walks in nature where no human created sound was heard, the only exception was the sound of footsteps on snow. Friday forecast was more promising than Thursday.

Usually the time between hello and good bye is short but infinite as well ~Naguib Mahfouz (Respected Sir)

As I can’t include a video in WP post, I am giving link to my instagram account.

Lens artists photo challenge

Jo’s Monday walk

I hope you enjoyed these moments.

Present turns into past so quickly

/ Rupali / 48 Comments

Walking on streets in NYC was a fantastic experience in itself. Every street, each corner leads me to a story I thought of sharing here on my blog. We walked and walked every day enjoying the beauty of those sourroundings. All was so different than the small town we live in. Our fitbits counted for more than 30 thousand steps each day. While sitting on trains and in little cafes I was planning the posts but as soon as I get down of it there was more to reveal and appreciate. Days past quickly. The stories framed in my mind are mostly gone. The minutes of excitement passed so quickly. I shall try to recall those moments and share the stories.

Over Greenland

Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.~ Ernest Hemingway

My two cents on travelling

  • Pre planning – It is advisable to have a rough plan if one is not having a tour package. I feel comfortable working on my own machine, the internet speed at home, and love the benefit of having multiple pages open on the big screen. I checked a couple of blogs and videos on New York. In this way I have had an idea about places, streets and avenues in Manhattan. As we were going to spent our time mostly in Manhattan and a little of Brooklyn, I divided the region horizontally into 5 parts to save comuting time.

The weather forecast didn’t look promising, after all we forgot to order sunshine while booking our tickets 😂😁🤣. We took our rain jackets with us and were glad about that as it was raining when we landed and it continued til midnight.

Our first evening across the hudson river – Grey, wet and cold
  • Don’t hesitate to ask for help – The transport system in every country is different and is impossible to remember all details. We stayed in Jersey city and used Path trains to travel to New York and for our convenience decided to buy a 7 day unlimited travel card (though it was expensive altogether). A period ticket gives us freedom and we can use it any time of the day without have to wait in a queue. I can admit of having good enough experience of using public transports not only in Japan, Hong Kong, Europe but also in a couple of cities in the US.
    • The machines at path stations are old and slow but workable. After a couple of tries we got our path smartlink card ready. Next, my card worked at the gate and I got to enter the station but my husband was denied entry 😢. Early morning on Sunday there were not so many passengers. After a short discussion we decided to buy singel tickets for each of us and go to World Trade Center and look for information counter. It’s a big station but we didn’t see any counter. My husband approached the poilce officers on duty and explained our problem. They called a red-jacket passenger information agent and asked him to help us. He too checked our cards. Luckily we had our receipts of payment. Remember to keep receipts of payments, especially in foreign lands. The agent told us to come back after an hour as the system needs one hour to activate the card. Gosh, have you ever heard this. He said will give us refund if it still didn’t work after an hour. There was no information about this one hour waiting period any where. Cards were activated when we checked them again.
    • After two days the cards got inactivated again in the evening. A red-jacket passenger information agent let us entered the station and asked us to call the customer service cell. By the time we reached our hotel the working hours were over ☹. My husband decided to send an email in the evening as he doesn’t like to delay things. For our surprise he got a reply saying our cards were still activated according to path trains system. Anyways we didn’t have any problem after that.
Oculus transportation hub
Outside World Trade center, ground zero
Walking in financial district
The tower
Brooklyn Bridge
Statens Island Ferry

We were able to visit a fair number of places on our first day. We walked on both the Brooklyn bridge and the Manhattan bridge and able to take Statens Island ferry before heading back to Jersey city.

Lens artists photo challenge – Symmetry

Jo’s Monday walk

Six Word Saturday

*****

A coincidence – Read this book on the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women living in Brooklyn area. Regardless of geography and religion, the education for women is really important in making women independent and confident.

I love capturing the autumn light

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And I am looking forward to capturing some awe moments in coming season.

It was not an easy task to pick a couple of favourites for lens artists photo challenge so I chose to celebrate “Autumn” and display images from my walks on mountains & on grounds .

Hope you like these oldies…

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see – Henry David Thoreau

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree ~Emily Brontë

I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift ~Dodinsky

It is my intention to present – through the medium of photography – intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.~ Ansel Adams

Jo’s Monday Walk

Six Word Saturday

Dawn’s Festival of leaves

Let nature do all the talking

/ Rupali / 48 Comments

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles ~Anne Frank

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.~ Haruki Murakami

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau

Being avid walkers we observe different moods of nature and it helps us enjoying nature as a whole. At times we don’t talk, simply breathe in the air and feel the blessings. We don’t wait for a booster dose, we rely on our daily dose of magic potion.

Lens artists photo challenge – Recharge

Jo’s Monday walk

Six Word Saturday

Keep smiling and keep walking.

What’s (was) bugging me?

/ Rupali / 39 Comments

The truth is, it’s little early to have captured the bugs for the season. What bothered me the most was my inability (with a long list of reasons) to have hiked a lovely place earlier this year.

Last weekend me being in the city encouraged me to go out and even the sun and the weather department were quite cooperative. Saturday turned into Sunday. Saturday was spent reading “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond. After breakfast on Sunday I hiked around 1300 uneven natural steps (Sherpa-trappene or Sherpa stairs ) to reach the top of the mountain named Ulriken. Ulriken is the highest of the Seven Mountains that surround the city of Bergen, Norway. It has a height of 643 metres above sea level. Four Sherpas from Nepal were hired to build stairs to Ulriken top.

Lens artists photo challenge – What’s bugging me

Lens artists photo challenge – Structures

Jos Monday Walk

Another links (in Norwegian) –

  1. https://www.nrk.no/vestland/sherpaer-fra-nepal-byggjer-trapp-til-ulriken-1.12957382
  2. Signe (93) made the trip up Ulriken

A video taken by me: The view

Happy weekend friends!