A casual Saturday outing exploring rural Bangalore

A weekend with some time to spare, and friend of mine and yours truly headed out to visit a friend's farm.
The roads were nice and we made some good time initially, the early start ensured there wasn't any heavy traffic.

A quick coffee break and we took a deviation from the main road towards the farm. The early morning freshness and the passing rural scenes made us feel good.

We reached the farm after seeking directions for sometime. Our friend welcomed us and we explored his farm, and had a few cement tanks (which were in the process of being setup).
His dog was quite adorable too!


We heard the calls of peacocks, ran across the field to spot a few.

Unfortunately, my P&S wasnt enough to capture these huge males flying across to the surrounding trees. What a sight it was!


We moved on to a small hamlet, soaking in the rural scene. Sipping on some nice tea, we walked around.



The Pace of life seems so different to ours, everything's got it's own time. Everyone in the village knows everyone else (How often do we know who our neighbours are in the city!)











We also saw a cow getting it's "cowshoes", seemed quite bad, but much needed to ensure the hooves do not get hurt when they walk on roads.






The lake near the village had good amount of water thanks to the rain lately. A group of Black Ibis were spotted too.



The shore had a good number of Baya weavers going about they're daily noisy chores



Next, we decided to see if we could catch some fish and collect a few rocks when we were there. The road to the water body


The water body itself


We caught quite a good amount of Puntius vittatus, A.panchax, G. giuris and lone Notopterus notopterus juvenile. Sadly all the vittatus had bad fungal growth on their bodies (my friend told me this was due to the fertilizers entering the water bodies from the irrigation fields). Saddened we moved on since we had accounted only half a day for this outing and could not explore further. We got back only a couple of Killies and the lone juvie knifefish (which was sadly killed during the journey after a road bump caused the rocks to land on one of the fish covers :( )

En route stopped at a small stream (could not spot any fish here)


The route back was much better and more scenic,





While at the farm, picked up a couple of Golden tree frogs, which are now housed in a temporary tank before they go into a vivarium of their own.

A few clicks of these lovely creatures :)

The larger of the two


The whole underside is so supremely adapted to an arboreal life


First he said "No photographs please"



And then the smaller of the two gave a willing pose


These are quite curious about their surroundings and hope they make for a great pet :D

Would be definitely visit the farm and it's surrounding for more exploration with more time on our hands :)

Cheers,
Hayath