The holy lake : Nako

It’s a bit of paradise ! The scenic lake and the twittering birds are for company. And the holy sky too ! Breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful, this holy lake in the upper reaches of Kinnaur (Himachal Pradesh, India) is simply addictive. In winter, the frozen Nako lake becomes a skiing hot spot for tourists.
Nako is 117 kms from Kalpa and Shimla is 244 kms from Kalpa. It’s almost a day’s journey from Shimla by road and you can take breaks at Kalpa or Sarahan . The mainhot spots are the Nako lake and Buddhist temples. At Tabo the monastery is highly revered as one of the best in the Himalayas, after the Tholing Gompa in Tibet. Except for the main temple, most of the paintings belong to the Gelupa ascendancy. Thousands of years ago, Tabo was the meeting place of Indians and Tibetans .

The space elevator

A space elevator is a proposed megastructure designed to transport material from a celestial body's surface into space. The term most often refers to a structure that reaches from the surface of the Earth to geosynchronous orbit (GSO) and a counter-mass beyond.
Current technology does not make available, in engineering quantities, materials that are sufficiently strong and light to build a space elevator for the most interesting case, from the Earth's surface to GSO. The Earth's effective gravitational potential well is simply too deep. However, the total mass of material needed to construct such a structure is an extremely strong function (exponential) of the strength and density of the supporting cable material. Carbon nanotubes appear to be interestingly close to making this possibility practical. Recent proposals for a space elevator are notable in their plans to incorporate carbon nanotubes into the tether design, thus providing a link between space exploration and nanotechnology. Because the Moon's gravitational potential well is approximately 20 times less deep than Earth's, a lunar cable, over the Earth-Moon Lagrangian point, L1, appears to be feasible even with current commercial materials, and could revolutionize the economics of the space use of lunar materials.
Despite all the daunting problems that face them, the space elevator enthusiasts say with research, time and money, they'll find a solution.
They insist that one day there will be lots of elevators ferrying satellites, prospectors and even tourists into space. They say the benefits of having them in space will be worth all the efforts.
Right now the cost of getting into space is one of the major blocks to more exploration. Mervyn Kellum has done studies on the cost of transportation comparing rockets to the space elevator.
Further reading :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/space/spaceelevator.html

Bharatpur bird sanctuary falls off tourist map !

Gone are the days when the famous bird sanctuary here seasonally drew over 300 species of winged visitors, bringing in thousands of tourists from all over the world.

With barely 50-80 bird species arriving this year at the virtually dry sanctuary, located 175 km from New Delhi, tourists have either started skipping it or have been cutting short their stay here.

'I came here to watch birds and stay here for at least five to seven days. I am a bird lover, but there is nothing, almost nothing, to see here. So I am curtailing my number of nights and I plan to go back in a day or two,' Robert Bell, a tourist from England, told IANS.

Some bemoan that the government is doing nothing to save the bird sanctuary while others are critical of tour operators who are marketing Bharatpur as a bird haven despite knowing the true state of affairs.

'I am surprised. Why can't the government do something for it? I had come here around five to six years back at the same time around October and November, and there were lots of birds to see. But the place is now pathetic. Does the government want a famous place to die?' asked Diana, another tourist from Britain.

The bird sanctuary, known officially as the Keoladeo Ghana National Park, wears a deserted look with very few birds and tourists in sight .