Friday Morning Wakeup Call – Thol Lake

Even though every photographer has told me that I should wake up early to take pictures, I must say that I haven’t done it once in the last year. Until now of course. On Thursday night at midnight, my friend asked if I wanted to join them in to the morning for a trip to some lake outside of the city. To even my surprise, I said yes, and was up at 5am to go on an adventure. After a quick stop for roadside Chai (and by quick I mean 25 minutes minimum), we made it to Thol Lake Bird Sanctuary just before the sunrise. It’s a beautifully peaceful place, full of over 100 species of birds. Plus, the light was amazing, and I now promise to get my lazy ass out of bed more often. Maybe.

The fun fact of the day is not so fun: Gujurat, the state I live in, is the only state in India where alcohol is completely banned. The law was placed in respect to  Mahatma Gandhi’s (who is from Gujurat) views on alcohol. Many people have bootleggers (yes, they call them that) but the alcohol is expensive and low quality. Plus it’s impossible to find wine or beer. We thought we could get around this not-so-fun fact by going to a five star hotel – which we heard might serve alcohol to foreigners with passports. When we got to the hotel, we were excited to find a bar, fully equip with bottles of champagne. Well turns out that the bottles were just for decoration and if you look closely in the photo below, you will see the bar is sadly stocked with water and redbull, and the “bartender” is making a milkshake. Needless to say it was a crazzzzy saturday night!