Five Colours of my Travels – Capture the Colour

The guys from Travel Supermarket is running an online photo contest called Capture the Colour. This contest is a great opportunity for bloggers to showcase their colourful photos. The great thing about this contest is the fact that it has nothing to do with popularity, votes or pageviews.

The idea behind the contest is to post five photos inspired by five different colors: blue, green, white, yellow and red. Just pick a photo that best represents each color and provide a little details about where it was taken or something about it.

And what are the great prizes that can be won? Each winners of the five color category wins a new Ipad3 and the grand prize will get £2000 (US$3,100).

 

More information is available on Travel Supermarket’s website.

 

These are my entries:

WHITE : The white-washed gompa of Lamayuru

 

White is her colour of Faith

 

This shot was taken at Lamayuru Gompa (Monastery) in one of the small town in Ladakh. This monastery is the oldest and one of the largest in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India.

Prayer wheels surround the nearby gompa and the Ladakhis spend some time a day doing their rounds of rolling these wheels while they utter their mantras. It’s almost surreal to see how religious they are. If they’re not doing their prayer wheel routines, you’ll see them praying using their small prayer wheels or their prayer beads.

 

BLUE: The endless blue sky of Spitti Valley

 

Blue symbolizes her resiliency

 

This shot was taken in Kibber, Himachal Pradesh. Kibber is one of the highest villages in the world located at 4,270 metres above sea level.

Throughout the state of Himachal Pradesh in India, you can see locals, mostly women, carrying woven basket loaded with anything on their backs. I saw her on my way to the nearby hill. She’s on her way up to her farm. Farming in this area is quite tough as summer only last for two months and it gets very cold for the rest of the year. According to some locals that I talked to, crops don’t usually survive the harsh weather. But the people here are very resilient and very hardworking and despite of all the odds, they get thru the day and are even generous enough to smile and greet tourists like me who visit their village.

 

RED : An old Ladakhi man wearing dark red robe in Hemis

 

Red symbolizes his belief

 

I took this shot when I attended the Hemis Festival in Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, India.

Hemis Gompa is the largest Buddhist monastery in Ladakh. Many devotees, local villagers and tourists gather here at the time of the festival to witness the monks perform. I saw an old Ladakhi seating in one corner holding a Mala (Buddhist Prayer Beads) while chanting mantras and enjoying the performances of the monks.

The highlight of the Hemis Festival is the masked dance, being performed by the monks. All of the performers wear elaborate and colourful costumes with brightly painted masks. The slow and very detailed dance movements portray the triumph of good over evil. The performance is accompanied by the sounds of drums, cymbals and trumpets.

 

GREEN : The green swamp of Keoladeo National Park

 

Green is the colour of Life

 

This shot was taken in Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, India.

Keoladeo is said to be one of the best places in the world to see a variety of birds. There are hundreds of species of local and migratory birds that call this place their home (or temporary home in case of the migratory birds). Some people used to hunt here centuries ago but the government has decided to protect this area and banned hunting and cattle grazing. Due to this effort, the population of birds increased and Keoladeo become one of the most biodiverse regions in India attracting big volume of local and foreign tourists annually. It generated tourism livelihood for the locals of Bharatpur. Aside from varieties of birds, you could also see jackals, nilgai (antelopes), sambar deers and they said that sometimes there are sightings of striped hyenas in this area.

 

YELLOW : The yellow flame of Ngaben

 

Yellow symbolizes the cycle of life

 

I took this shot while I was in Ubud, Bali in Indonesia.

I was so fortunate to witness Ngaben, the biggest and the most sophisticated among the five rituals carried out by the Balinese Hindu. Ngaben or commonly known as cremation, is one of the most important ceremonies for Balinese because its purpose is to send the deceased through their next life and return the elements that are used to create the human body to its origin.

The body was wrapped in a plain white cloth and laid inside a black bull called lembu which is made of wood and paper. The bull symbolizes the vehicle that will take the soul to their next life.

The Balinese people believe that the soul will return back as a reincarnation of a new family member, such as the first baby born after this final ritual.

 

 

As a part of the contest I am nominating 5 fellow bloggers to participate in the same.

 

Here are my nominees:

 

Albino of I Wander
Flip of Flipnomad
Ruth of Tanama Tales
Doc Wends of Journeys and Travels
Jerome of Balintataw

 

GOOD LUCK!