It’s quite late in the evening and we’re huddled inside a shepherd’s hut at a height of 3500m in Himalayas. My guide’s parents were temporarily camping out in the meadow to graze a flock of 500-odd sheep. This was their hut. The old man, my guide’s father, is 75 yet phenomenally active for his age. He has collected wild curry leaves from the meadow and that would be part of our dinner. Inside the hut, there is little light except for the flicker of the flame upon which our dinner will be cooked. Cows are tied behind in one corner and this man positions himself near the stone hut’s entrance to catch some light from the fading evening to clean and cut the leaves. As a photographer, I think this is a perfect environmental shot accurately portraying all that was going on in the shepherd hut that evening. But it’s also quite late, there’s hardly any light for me to make a perfect image. But I try! I bump up the ISO to 20000 and set the shutter speed at 1/20 at the risk of underexposing the shot with the hope that I could pull out the details in post processing. And here’s the result below - quite impressed with the tack sharp and natural quality of this image taken at extreme low light inside a dark shepherd’s hut.

In June this year, I spent few weeks in Uttarakhand testing a brand new mirrorless camera. Panasonic is the latest entrant into full frame mirrorless market. They sure took their time before jumping into the fray but they’ve come up with a solid product. Launched as the new Lumix S Series, two flagship full frame mirrorless cameras were announced last year, up for sale this year. LUMIX S1R and S1 are the two cameras, both with a 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor and an exciting L-Mount standard.(We’ll get to why this is exciting in a bit). The S1R is the top of the line camera with a 47.3-megapixel sensor while the S1 sports a 24.2-megapixel sensor. I carried the Lumix S1 paired with a Panasonic S 24-105mm f/4 lens with me.

Now in the interests of all fairness, I must disclose I haven’t used any other mirrorless systems yet, so there will be no comparison whatsoever. This post is purely based on my experience of using Lumix S1 alone, which was my workhorse for the two weeks I spent in Uttarakhand.

Lumix S1 - The ultimate hybrid for Stills and Video. Image courtesy: Panasonic

Panasonic’s Lumix S1 is the 24.2 Megapixel camera that is meant to be an all round professional camera for both videography and photography on a slightly lower price point (S1R is more expensive and targets purely professional still photographers btw). But priced at 2500 USD (body only), S1 is definitely more expensive than similar models of competing brands. However, there are some distinct advantages the S1 brings to the table.

It’s a hot summer night in Delhi. Crowds are milling about. You get into your bus towards the mountains, it’s supposed to leave at 10PM. It’s midnight now. The bus finally leaves. It’s 6 AM in the morning and you are exhausted from the heat and the acute mental stress from the preceding days. At 7AM you are supposed to be in Dehradun. You find out you are abandoned in Haridwar.

It’s a hot summer morning at Haridwar. It’s 8AM now and the crowds are milling about. The government run public transportation is a nightmare and utterly inadequate. The bus station is packed, thousands of people are sweating and sighing in the morning heat that would soon aggravate to rival the misery of seventh circle of hell!

You walk around to find cash, ATMs are empty. You try to find a shared taxi. There’s no sight of shared taxis to Uttarkashi or even Dehradun. It’s Yatra season and all are engaged as private hires. You are dizzy from not having dinner the previous night and the heat, the oppressive heat. You buy a red bull and gulp it down. You are already scammed of Rs. 300 by an auto and a rickshaw fellow, but you only feel sorry for the poor old men struggling to make ends meet.

You return to the bus station and sit down carrying over 20kilos on your person, jostling for space. After a decade of pottering around the country, you wonder, is travel in India really worth the colossal incompetence and apathy? But you have an assignment. You need to plod on.

A bus arrives at long last, hordes of people throw themselves at the bus. It's packed in seconds, even before you stand on your feet. Do you really want to fight for it? There is little dignity in scrambling for your space when the government abandons you like this. You let go of the idea to use public transportation, and book a private taxi to Uttarkashi. But before you exit Haridwar, you are now stuck in a two-hour traffic jam. You are the traffic jam, you sigh! It is Yatra season you see. The heat is oppressive even in the mountains. You reach your destination at long last. The village looks like this. Is travel in India still worth all the trouble? You’ll find out soon!

Welcome to Uttarakhand! Let the adventures begin.