Considered one of the most beautiful gardens in Pune, the Osho Garden is a Japanese Zen garden founded by Shunyo foundation. It was built in 1994 on a nullah and hence it is also known as Nala Park. The holding ponds along with selected plants and stones were used to purify the polluted water. The Osho International Commune looks after this garden.



Situated behind the Osho Ashram in the Koregaon Park area of Pune, the Osho Garden covers a total area of 5 hectares. As this garden-cum-park is situated near the main city, it becomes easy for the Punekars to come here and enjoy its beauty. The very beauty lies in the environment that it provides, which is very natural, calming, and soothing. It allows you to get closer with inner self and nature. The beauty and the picturesque view of the garden will captivate you from the word go. While passing by the park through a small pathway, you will come across a shady place along with a statue of Buddha and white stones, which serves as a pleasing resting place for visitors. Plus, the birds energize and revive the atmosphere with their chirping. In addition, the sound of water makes the environment peaceful and rejuvenating. You will also find bridges made up of stones, and bamboo trees which add to the grandeur of the park. You will also enjoy viewing the lush greenery, beautiful rock gardens, and wooden pathways in the park. Plus, a variety of trees, herbs, and shrubs highlights the diversity of nature. The park is so beautiful and magnificent that you will never come to know that it was once a nullah until you read it somewhere. In fact, it is very difficult to believe so.

All the people right from children to the old ones enjoy visiting and revisiting the Osho Garden. The children accompanied by parents enjoy the feel of the garden whereas the people enjoy spending time with their family or friends. The college students find it pleasant for study purposes or to get refreshed while the Ashram members meditate here daily. This park also has a jogging track, which is convenient in all terms. Fitness freaks as well as the old ones enjoy their morning and evening walks or jogs there as the facilities along with the surroundings make it a perfect place for exercises. The working professionals find spending time in the park relaxing and refreshing after a hectic day.

The Osho Garden is open for all unlike the Osho International Meditation Resort. It remains open from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. everyday. It will be better to opt for Pune Darshan bus or you can hire a rickshaw from Bund Garden road to reach there. Thus it is a place that you can visit again and again, but if you have not visited it yet then you must visit it to sense its beauty and feel close to the nature.


SOURCE: justforhe

True story: While visiting his parents in the town of Naya Nangal in Indian Punjab, Aman, a resident of the UK, decided to take a look at Google Maps to check out the towns nearby. One of the results thrown up was Lahore. Curious, he asked Google Maps for driving directions from Naya Nangal to Lahore. This is what he got:

Geographically, Lahore is quite close: the distance between Lahore and Naya Nangal is less than that between Delhi and Chandigarh. The route is also quite conducive to road travel: the plains of the Punjab are as flat as a parantha.

But of course, there’s the matter of the Radcliffe Line – the bristling border between India and Pakistan – which cleaves through Punjab. It is an impermeable, if invisible, wall between Lahore and Naya Nangal. Always angry with each other, India and Pakistan do not allow vehicular traffic across their borders (unless they’re fighting a war and the vehicles are tanks).

To get to Lahore, therefore, Aman would need to take a more circuitous route. Rather than go west, he would have to travel east across Uttar Pradesh and take a left at Nepal. He would then have to motor across the highest mountain range in the word and drive across Tibet to Xinjiang in China. In Xinjiang, he would to take a sharp U-turn to enter Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and then drive down into the West Punjab plains and voila! Lahore!

The total distance he’d need to drive: 5,275 km.

To put that in perspective, the flying distance between Delhi and Athens – two cities on different continents – is shorter than that: 5,050 km.

If Aman decided to walk across the Punjab, however, he’d have to travel a great deal less: only 211 km. The only land border between India and Pakistan allows people to cross over on foot.

Google Maps, it seems, is only the latest observer since 1947 to have noted the madness of Partition and how it has bedevilled India-Pakistan relations since then.

SOURCE: scroll.in

The black-headed parrot (Pionites melanocephalus ; sometimes incorrectly Pionites melanocephala), also known as the black-headed caique, black-capped parrot or pallid parrot (for P. m. pallidus), is one of the two species in the genus Pionites of the Psittacidae family; the other species being the allopatric white-bellied parrot.

It is found in forest (especially, but not exclusively, humid) and nearby wooded habitats in the Amazon north of the Amazon River and west of the Ucayali River in Brazil, northern Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. It is generally fairly common and occurs in many protected areas throughout its ranges.

Spring is one of the four conventional temperate seasons, following winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of the term varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. When it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. At the spring equinox, days are approximately 12 hours long with day length increasing as the season progresses. Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth.

During spring, the axis of the Earth is increasing its tilt relative to the Sun, and the length of daylight rapidly increases for the relevant hemisphere. The hemisphere begins to warm significantly causing new plant growth to "spring forth," giving the season its name. Snow, if a normal part of winter, begins to melt, and streams swell with runoff. Frosts, if a normal part of winter, become less severe. In climates that have no snow and rare frosts, the air and ground temperatures increase more rapidly. Many flowering plants bloom this time of year, in a long succession sometimes beginning when snow is still on the ground, continuing into early summer. In normally snowless areas "spring" may begin as early as February (Northern Hemisphere) heralded by the blooming of deciduous magnolias, cherries and quince, or August (Southern Hemisphere) in the same way. Many temperate areas have a dry spring, and wet autumn (fall), which brings about flowering in this season more consistent with the need for water as well as warmth. Subarctic areas may not experience "spring" at all until May or even June.

While spring is a result of the warmth caused by the changing orientation of the Earth's axis relative to the Sun, the weather in many parts of the world is overlain by events which appear very erratic taken on a yearly basis. The rainfall in spring (or any season) follows trends more related to longer cycles or events created by ocean currents and ocean temperatures. Good and well-researched examples are the El Niño effect and the Southern Oscillation Index.

Unstable weather may more often occur during spring, when warm air begins on occasions to invade from lower latitudes, while cold air is still pushing on occasions from the Polar regions. Flooding is also most common in and near mountainous areas during this time of year because of snowmelt, accelerated by warm rains. In the United States, Tornado Alley is most active this time of year, especially since the Rocky Mountains prevent the surging hot and cold air masses from spreading eastward and instead force them into direct conflict. Besides tornadoes, supercell thunderstorms can also produce dangerously large hail and very high winds, for which a severe thunderstorm warning or tornado warning is usually issued. Even more so than in winter, the jet streams play an important role in unstable and severe weather in the springtime in the Northern Hemisphere.

In recent decades season creep has been observed, which means that many phenological signs of spring are occurring earlier in many regions by a couple of days per decade.

Spring is seen as a time of growth, renewal, of new life (both plant and animal) being born. The term is also used more generally as a metaphor for the start of better times, as in the Prague Spring.

Spring in the Southern Hemisphere is different in several significant ways to that of the Northern Hemisphere for several reasons: there is no land bridge between Southern Hemisphere countries and the Antarctic zone capable of bringing in cold air without the temperature-mitigating effects of extensive tracts of water; the vastly greater amount of ocean in the Southern Hemisphere at all latitudes; at this time in Earth's geologic history the Earth has an orbit which brings it in closer to the Southern Hemisphere for its warmer seasons; there is a circumpolar flow of air (the roaring 40s and 50s) uninterrupted by large land masses; no equivalent jet streams; and the peculiarities of the reversing ocean currents in the Pacific.