Amazing Ants

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Well, technically termites, not ants – and despite having lived a few years in Southern India, I still never learned much about the various species – but you can generally recognize them by the shape of their mounds.  I discovered this one somewhere between Bangalore and Shravanabelagola.

I remember reading somewhere that these mounds grow on average as little as 1 cm per year – and if that’s true, these are very old mounds.

You can see my other Amazing Ants photographs here:

Generations on Mount Abu

While travelling through Rajasthan I was able to watch the sunset from Mount Abu. I am not sure why, but watching the sunset from Mount Abu is famous, and lots of people come here to do it.  I was there in high summer (temperatures over 40 C, although much cooler on the hill station), and all the haze you can see below is due to wildfires raging all over Rajasthan.

 

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But what I really like is a photo that a family asked me to take of them. It was unplanned and unstaged and unscripted – and it was a bit unusual because they never asked me to send the picture to them, just to take it –  but it makes a very nice “generations” picture:

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The Shot

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This is known as “the shot” of the Taj Majal.  Normally you’d find around 2 million tourists here, all vying for this shot. The secret to having the place to yourself: come in the middle of high summer.  The temperature when I was here on this day was over 45 C.