This is one end of NE 40th Street. Lake Sammamish lies at the other end of it. As you can see, Redmond is a really beautiful city and the flowers outside this house completely epitomizes how beautiful the place is.

Here Jaydeep and I are walking past this huge tree which made an interesting photograph. The sun's setting but is high enough to capture this moment where tree looked "enlightened".

Ah.. the clear blue waters of the lake. It's pretty common to see fish jumping out of the water and ducks floating over the water. There's always a few people kayaking, boating, fishing or skiing in the waters. You may also see the occasional sea-plane land or take off from the waters.

Jaydeep and I are at Lake Sammamish Park. It's picturesque with lush green lawns and a lakeside beach. Wonderful place to enjoy the peace and the occasional good weather. After spending nearly an hour on the benches by the side of the lake, I decided to be more creative and got this, as Shoba would call it, a calender-snap.

And that's Jaydeep and me sitting at the bench of the shores of the lake. It was a weekend, and a good weather one so lots of families were there to enjoying good barbeques.

Khoob jamega rang jab mil baithenge theen yaar... aap, mein aur apna kayak. That's Shiroy in the front, Jeremy at the rear and me in the middle - my first time kayaking !

Here's some adventurous photographs where we're in the middle of a huge lake amongst boats and planes, it's drizzling, we could potentially tip over into the lake any time and I'm taking snaps! Well that's me!

Like I said, there were all kinds of boats. Here's where I tried to capture this boat sailing the waters with Seattle downtown, the docks and the Space Needle as a backdrop.

Now here's an interesting story. We're trying to reach this piece of land on one side of the lake where there stood this boiler looking construction. So there's this couple sitting on the banking walls enjoying a "precious" moment. We "innocently" are taking pictures of the degenerate boiler when I guess the girl realizes that we're around and taking pictures. God knows what got into her and she pretended to flash us! I remember Shiroy and I laughing a lot after that.

Here's me trying to capture a photograph of this sea-plane taking off from the lake with Seattle's skyline as the backdrop. With the kayak bobbing around and camera battery dying, taking this picture wasn't easy.

Just one of the other lakes on the way to Mt. Rainier offering a chance for yet another picture perfect landscape picture.

This is the entrance of Mount Rainier National Park. The summit is a 45 minute scenic drive from here.

We were somewhere halfway up to the summit and were absolutely in awe over the stupendous beauty of the surroundings. On one side was a river flowing down the and on the other side was the snow capped Rainier.

Here's the road side view of Christine Viewpoint Falls. It gets a little bigger and more powerful a little off the road. Heck this one looks so beautiful, it almost looks artificial.

We're atop Rainier where there are these huge meadows of snow. It was the first time that I saw snow and there was tonnes and tonnes of it. Here's Shiroy "getting back" at Jeremy for snowball-pelting that he received. Somehow Jerry looks like the more meanacing one!

That's right! That's snow... my first snow. And what a beautiful place to see it than a snow capped mountain peak!

Here's Jeremy and I building a snow man. It's a lot harder to build one than it looks. That's me shoveling snow with a pine branch Shiroy had found and Jeremy piling it up while Shiroy's taking snaps of us.

That's me one hour later standing next to our creation - the huge snow man. What you don't see is how we later turned it into a snow woman! He he...

On our way down the mountain, we stopped by the Narada Falls. I've seen a lot of falls but have never seen so many so powerful waterfalls all at one place. I tried to take a photograph but quite frankly, there's absolutely no way you can capture how brilliant these falls were.

Some of the wildlife in the Rainier National Park. It was simply awesome to find this deer (amongst the many others), just grazing by the side of the road.

Jeremy, Shiroy and I set off on our road trip to Lake Tahoe. It was a fourteen hour drive one way across three states on the west coast. I think in this snap we're in California and fun was just about to begin !

Here we're at the Bridal Veil Falls just a few miles from Lake Tahoe. The structure of the falls makes the name perfect for this waterfall.

The first place we visited was the Pope Estate, this huge historical land dotted with majestic houses, antique wood cutting tools, gas pumps, etc. That's Jeremy in the first snap and the second snap is the fantastic view of the three-foot-shore icy Pope Beach.

Here I am at the Kiva beach. The shoreline with the cloudy mountains in the backdrop made this a picturesque sight. What you don't see is that it was freezing cold out here. In fact the mist that you see is snow being carried from the icy mountains by gusts of wind.

This is the cabin in which we stayed for the night - whole 11 of us, the remaining being Jeremy's and Shiroy's friends and their friends. Eleven of us guys stayed in this super-romantic log cabin, eight of whom drank like there was no tomorrow. Shiroy and me were the only two who didn't drink. Shiroy dozed off early and nocturnal me spoke to Shoba over the phone for over an hour.

On our second day we went to some of the more habitable beaches around. This one here is Commons Beach. We didn't actually spend time on this beach but the view from here made a great photograph anyway.

Here are some pictures of me at King's Beach. This was just before we set of kayaking and other water activities. Many thanks to Shiroy for these and other awesome snaps you see on this page.

Here are some shots of King's Beach. Except for the last one, the others were taken on a bobbing kayak. Pretty neat, huh?

Yup, that's Shiroy and me kayaking in Lake Tahoe at King's Beach. So here's the story - I had taken my camera on the kayak being the risk-taking nut that I am. After taking some really neat snaps, we suddenly realized that we don't have snaps of ourselves. All our friends were somewhere far in the water. So here's what we do - we paddled to the nearest pier where there were these bunch of people standing around. We handed over the camera to one of them and she took some really good snaps. Thanks lady !

Here's a really awesome snap of Lake Tahoe. What you're seeing in this snap is privately owned pier. Someday, I'm going to get me on of those !

This is the entrance of Squaw Valley which hosted the Winter Olympics a long time ago. Had to look like an idiot to take that second snap - but yeah I thought it looks pretty cool. It was a nice scenic half an hour drive up to Squaw Village.

On the way up to Squaw Village we stopped by this beautiful pasture. Neither I, nor Shiroy could actually get the entire range colors in the landscape.

Here's Shiroy and me indoor rock climbing. Had only seen things like these on the X-games. We couldn't go up the mountain skiing or skating that day, but this was incredible fun too ! In the first picture the instructor was teaching us how to be the safety for the one climbing.

On the second day we decided to go back to Squaw Valley and either ski or ice skate. So we took the scenic cable car ride up the mountains. It was pretty neat view on the way up.

Yeah, that's me skating on the Olympic ring. Well to be honest my first tryst with ice skating was aweful. I probably could have set a record in the number of times a person fell. Maybe an Olymic ring was a fitting venue ;-) but I think that in the end I kind of got the hang of it, though the big 'L' on my head seemed apt !

Here are some snaps at Squaw Village. There were these life size board games and trampolines on which kids played. The whole place was buzzing with activity. There was a live band too out there - t'was just an awesome place to be.

This snap was taken on our drive back home of the scenic California country side farm lands.

Again on our way back we passed Mt. Shasta covered with snow and clouds lazily sitting on top of the peaks drenched in the colors of the sunset making these a fantastic set of photographs.

Yup, the sun set on this awesome road trip and we were off to start off a new week in Microsoft.

Shiroy, Jerry and I went bowling to Sunset Bowl in Seattle one night along with one of their friend from Atlanta. Here's Shiroy posing for a snap and Jerry in action on the alley.

My first hand at Bowling. Totally kickass timepass. Was a lot of fun, got a few strikes too. Wait till I turn pro (ha ha ha)!

And what do you do after your first night bowling? Sing away at a karaoke bar to a bunch of drunk people. So here's the story. So we walk up to the counter and this guy jokes - "you guys must be into country music, right?" To which my comeback was - "He he, right... but the question is - which country ha ha ha!"

This is a view of the massive Snoqualmie Falls from the vista point high up near the road. There's a nice trail from all the way up down to the base of the waterfall which is quite scenic.

This is the vista point from where you get a bird's eye view of the Snoqualmie Falls.

That's me acting stupid in the forest on a dead log - awesome greenery around, don't you think?

Along the trail down to the base of the falls there was this small open area where a couple of deer were grazing. Here's this babe being all cute and making an interesting photograph.

That's me sitting by the rocky banks of the Snoqualmie river and Jerry giving a demonic laugh while Shiroy tries in vain to "capture the moment"!

Well, indoor artificial rock climbing's - been there and done that... so that's me doing the "real thing". Yup, reaching for new heights, getting there and balancing myself at the top.

Neat snap by Shiroy of me "thinking"...

A couple of snaps of the mighty Snoqualmie Falls from about a hundred meters - wonderfully picturesque. Extremely tricky getting a snap out here because with the falls crashing at such close proximity, there was a rain of tiny dropplets of water spraying all over the place. It causes the rainbow but also wets the camera lense. The second picture kind of shows how much water was being sprayed around. That's a small bridge just on the other side of the river - almost invisible.

That's Jerry, Shiroy and crazy-hair man in the middle. Yeah wind and long hair weren't meant to co-exist.

Nice place to fish, but it seemed like those guys were enjoying the beer more than anything else.

Here's a snap of the falls taken from another vista point, awesome isn't it?

That's Shiroy and me - kind of rare to find both of us in one snap considering that we're the two guys clicking away all the time. But yeah - this "golden moment" by Jeremy.

Here's the entrance of Marymoor Park. A really beautiful place just a couple of miles off the Microsoft Campus where Shiroy and I had gone cycling one afternoon.

That's me on my awesome bicycle near a wood sculpture titled 'Mother and Child'.

Me again, this time near this $50,000 gift to the sculpture-art collection at Marymoor - 'Pi in the Sky'.

Here's a magnificient shot of the Sammamish River just off the Sammamish River Trail on the way to the wineries. This simply awesome picture was taken by Shiroy.

Here's some great architecture at the Redmond City Hall.

The big bump on the largely plane landscape - Mount Rainier. This shot was taken close to the wineries.

The evening sunset casts long shadows of Shiroy on me on the Sammamish River trail where we had gone for this 8 mile cycling trip.