Picture-perfect moments

Meena S Joshi

Water skiing was my long cherished dream. I had been harbouring an intense desire for the same ever since I saw the film ‘An evening in Paris’, particularly the song ‘Aasman se aaya farishta’. In this song, Sharmila Tagore is water skiing and Shammi Kapoor is singing a song, dangling from a helicopter. From then onwards, I started nurturing a dream of trying this out though I did not do anything to fulfil it. And I also had a dream to visit the paradise on earth – our own Kashmir. In spite of many efforts, I could not visit Kashmir due to the perpetual unrest there.

However, in 2016, the year when I completed 60 years of age, both my dreams came true. In May 2016, I visited Kashmir and did water skiing at the famed Dal Lake of Srinagar. At that moment, I felt I was truly blessed.

Shashank Dhruva

This is one photo that is always going to render me speechless in the years to come!! It was during the Char Dham yatra with my parents in the month of October in 2016. This place was at Chopta, or what our guide called as the ‘Indian Switzerland’. Though my family members had gone for this trip earlier, I always used to be left behind since I was a kid. I have heard my sister describing the awe-inspiring sight of ice capped mountains but when I saw these enormous mountains for the first time in my life. I was dumbstruck. I literally wanted to hug them; a feeling that I have tried to capture in the first snap with the landscape behind me.. The mountains in that picture are from the  Kedarnath range, that we visited two days before Chopta. This is my ‘new’ for this year and a ‘new’ in my life.

Sushmita Nad

Going on a solo trip has to be on the ‘to-do’ list of many women. Similar was the case for me. But going on a solo trip was one thing; indulging in bungee jumping was another thing altogether. In 2016, I fulfilled my wildest adventure fantasies by taking off on a solo trip and trying my hand at cliff jumping. If this wasn’t enough, I threw in a bit of white-water rafting, just for the thrill of it. It was an exhilarating experience.