photography

Navarathri 2026

This year we celebrated Navarathri by visiting friends and family across the bay area.

San was happy and that made me happy.

She did all the driving and logistics. All I did was match her Sari to the best of my ability and go sing in a lot of places where she was happy to sit back and listen. She also had to do most of the eating as I am allergic to lot of things. Felt bad that she had to pull this off solo..

Here are the pictures..

First the matching matching..

Once your head has stopped spinning.. you can take a look at this.. (except today, where I was not invited, made it all the other days).. The picture below is definitely prettier than the one above, without me being a “repeater drishti pottu”. This one needed the floor pose to cover up some gaps.. not all pictures were the same.. San was not happy that I kept using same backdrop in same location every day.. hope she sees this and understands why!

A gallery of all the Kolu’s and any dolls that were unique or caught my eye…(in portrait format)

Photos in landscape format..

There was a lot of enthusiasm, creativity from adults and kids in the doll displays this year! Hoe this gives you a good glimpse of our bay area navarthri visits..

We are at an age where the number of folks who don’t celebrate every year is increasing. We are all in fifties. That means previous generation is in their 80’s and 90’s. A lot of missing folks and kolus this year as well. Then again, time keeps going and they will come back the following year.

Got to learn 12 new songs and got to sing a few of them.. A separate post on that tomorrow. Have finally learned to admire Dikshidhar after all these years!

Indian festivals are amazing!

A renewed festival season

Last year there were no celebrations or festivities in our house. It was a year of “remembering dad”.

This year we started celebrating again with the Varalakshmi, then Krishna Jayanthi, Aavaniavittam, Ganesha Chathurthi and finally we are ending with the Navarathri festivities. Life has thrown a few curveballs in the last few months and every event ended up with memories that made it not blog worthy.

Finally getting to share some photos from those events in the blog, before we get to the kolu padis..

Let’s go one step at a time..and I made them all collages..

Food that completely covers the carb, fat, sugar ternary phase diagram..

Then there is photos I send to my mom after completing each poojai or prayer… you can see the improvement in my knee from the smile on my face after sitting down cross legged for an hour at least for each of these prayers.. This morning I managed a smile and drove to work without any additional swelling!

A few other photos (the Onam spread would have required a wide angle lens that is yet to be developed)..

Now that brings us to the Navarathri festival that needs a special post or two..

Wrapping up a Yosemite hiking weekend with June lake loop

The previous post in this series is here..

After seeing the Tufa tower sunset at Mono lake, we came back to the lodge and decided to change our Mammoth lake plan. June lakes it turns out was closer and as beautiful. There were four lakes in the loop each with its own view. The entire loop was 16 miles and we could go back through the national park, have lunch at one of the benches in Yosemite and be on our way home.

None of us had visited June lake and our 9th member had suggested it. We were all happy with the change of plan. Finished our morning chai and breakfast, checked out and started driving.

We went away from the park for 20 more minutes (Mammoth would have been 45 minutes!) and drove through the June lake loop. The lakes in sequence are June lake, Gull lake, Silver lake and Grant lake.

We spent 30-45 minutes in each lake, took pictures, walked a small trail and drove from lake to lake. Finally we said bye to our friend at Grant lake and the other 8 made it to Yosemite park entrance. Just before the entrance we stopped by the first bridge that was built to cross over and saw the commemoration plate. We also watched the waterfall at the entrance.

Tried to find parking inside Yosemite to eat lunch. No luck after three tries. Finally parked by the side of the road, sat on a tree and ate the lunch that was already prepared. The ladies had it all microwaved in the morning before we even left. The food tased delicious, again. Then we made a dash for home.. with a few stops for breaks. We were back by dinner time!

It was a weekend well spent. Knew this was a risk but was glad to be able to relax in nature on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Also I did not drive. Just sat in the backseat and enjoyed the view. The entire group made it special for me. San made me feel “normal” again.

Here are the photos..

A video highlights reel. June lake loop area is called the Switzerland of California! Did not know that!

Think there will be a long break before I hike again! Enjoyed editing photos, reliving memories and writing about this trip. Hopefully once the knee is better, will get back to hiking again, but it will be very slow and steady progress!