The Bond Falls was swishing and swirling over the rocks joyfully on the weekend of Memorial Day(28-30th May) as we walked on the trails and stairs alongside sometimes stepping out on the rocks, sometimes touching the waterfall from the trails. 




 This was when we had drove from Milwaukee the day when forecast of Thunderstorms and rains were eminent and we clad in our raincoats, completely drenched, were enjoying the earthy serenity rain brings. Welcome to Upper Peninsula Michigan, a place not much written about online, but I still wonder why! It’s a place so unexplored and virgin that exploring it brings to the very core of nature. 






 And if there’s one season to enjoy the waterfalls in its full power,
In this part of the world,
 It would be Spring,
When the ice from the winter has melted,
When the sun isn’t harsh to dry up the water,
When the rains add volume and intensity,
And when the wild flower blooms and sprouts.

 Bond Falls Waterfall is located in Bond Falls State Park in Trout Creek, Michigan. It is 5 hours from Milwaukee, 7.5 hours from Chicago but the rains were such that even though we started early, it was only at 5 pm we could reach the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park which came further 1 hour 15 minutes from Bond Falls.





 There are three ways to drive from Milwaukee to Bond Falls but we took the route which comprised of Harley Davidson Tour Center Menomonee, Little Switzerland, an Equestrian Farm that was alongside the road where you can learn horse riding and then would come Lakes after Lakes which would completely surprise you. You would be crossing the big lake loop with a big Pelican Lake which also has water activities in plenty though it was all covered in fog when we went, and the three lakes. The lakes in itself are very peaceful and calm and one can easily picnic there.




 As you proceed ahead, you would be entering Michigan and the signboard would say ‘Welcome to Michigan’ and when you’d look at your watch, Michigan is one hour ahead of Wisconsin so the time would change. Drive down straight to Bond Falls which doesn’t have a lot of hike to do, the trails are very well made, the parking is right there, making it also very Handicap friendly.

 The wooden trail alongside the waterfall will give you the best view. You can walk on the trail and walk on the stairs that would take you to the Bond Falls Flowerage from the Base of the Fall, as you would be literally walking alongside the track of falls, where at places, you can get down the trail and click your pictures, you would be able to even touch the water of the waterfalls from the trails and even after getting down the trail.






 And yes, if you have time, which we didn’t due to heavy rain and fog and since we had to enter porcupine by 5 pm, you could drive down 25 minutes from Bond Falls to O Kun De Kun Falls, where you’d have to hike 1.5 mile from the parking area and there you can go beneath the falls which is spectacular way to see one, isn’t it?

 But unfortunately this is the experience we had to miss.. You can click on the link of the blog that talks about their expedition to Kun De Kun Falls here

https://csdailyblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/expedition-to-o-kun-de-kun-falls/

Hope you enjoyed our short excursion in the rains to Bond Falls, lets proceed further to Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park where we talk to rangers and explore circle tour of Lake Superior including some more thunderous waterfalls! 

About 6 months back, I got a GoPro Hero 4 Silver. I was super excited as I thought it would be the solution to all my problems and I wouldn’t have to carry my bulky DSLR at all. After usage for about 3-4 videos, I came out to a conclusion that its definitely a cool camera(but is not a replacement for your DSLR) and its so small that you could capture many things without bringing it to notice (Well..sneaky in a good way) but it also lacks a few things because its an action camera after all!


So today we are going to talk about GoPro Hero 4 Silver and when and where can it be used. We’ll also highlight about the various accessories that you may need to purchase. You can get your GoPro from Amazon from here

 1)Buying an SD Card 

 The first thing which you may need to buy for your GoPro would be SD card for storage of data. We have gotten Micro SDHC Lexar 64 GB which can store HD as well as 4K videos. You also get included reader with the purchase of Lexar 64 GB which you can quickly and easily transfer files between devices(i.e Laptops and etc). You can also buy SD card of higher storage capacity like 200 GB but it seriously would be a lot of data to transfer. I haven't tried 4k yet because I have heard it takes lot of space and possibly a better laptop than mine.


Since the camera is small, the placeholder where the memory card goes is also very small. So when you take off the cover from the memory card placeholder in the camera, keep it in a safe place. You can easily forget putting them back again because they are very small and I forget that many many times. Sometimes I just put the waterproof casing on and I then notice that my memory card cover is what I have missed.



 2)You would need an extra battery or two 

 Trust me guys, if you are a travel blogger and on the field, and capturing Hi-res videos you would need extra batteries. The batteries last long but they do die fast in cold or if you are venturing all day capturing stuff or lengthy sequences of videos by the late afternoon or evening. Hence, its great to have extra batteries. We have gotten two called Wasabi Power Batteries from Amazon as they were cheaper than the GoPro ones and they work great. I am yet to find out the difference in working hours between GoPro and Wasabi.



 3)GoPro Hero 4 is Waterproof with the casing and great for sports 

 Gopro Hero 4 comes with waterproof casing making it a waterproof camera and that’s a major thumbs up. You can dip in the water, in the mud, in the wherever there is water, you can wash it when it gets dirty and it captures water and water activities very nicely. Though if you are capturing rain, make sure to wipe off the lens as often as possible during rain or the consistent droplet would appear in each shot. Its great for scuba diving and water shots. Its great for adventure sports as well with the casing. I recommend to keep the casing on your GoPro with the sports because dust, mud, water and etc..

 4)GoPro lacks Sound 

 If your purpose is to capture something with sound which we often in videos love to do, GoPro with the waterproof casing is not a good option. The sound comes very very low with the casing. So in case if you need to record your voice or voice of your environment clearly, it has to be either maximum(like equivalent to a pitch of a shriek or you need to talk loudly or the ambivalent sound should be loud enough) or remove the casing. But even with the removal of casing, the sound quality is not so great, the sound is better than with the waterproof case but still not at par.



You get Gopro with waterproof casing, but you can also get normal Frame casing for better sound after you remove waterproof casing and you can attach that to your selfie stick.

If your primary purpose is to record clear and crisp audible sound, get a small mike. I found this one with great reviews on Amazon (but you'd have to buy an adapter along with it and that costs us $50 in total) as a GoPro mike but I am still searching for a pen mike that would be more handy.

i.e. If you need audio equivalent to your DSLR or more, you would need a mike. If you are ok with the audio equivalent to how your phone records, you would be ok with frame mount or without it. And if you want to listen to sound lesser than your phone captures and you really have to speak loud, stay with waterproof mount. Choice is yours.

 Like for example, when I first made videos on Vegas, I didn’t know my voice would come so low with the waterproof mount. And so next time, we recorded the intro on DSLR just because we didn’t had the mike which we still don’t have.

 5)GoPro lacks Zoom 

 How I wish they had added this sometimes but then again its a small camera. I guess most of us know this, but GoPro doesn’t have zoom so you can capture water, but capturing dolphins in water close and clear is not possible unless you want to really get close to the subject. Anything which requires a zoom by the naked eye would be difficult to capture by GoPro. I wish they had clip on zoom lenses but so far they haven't come up with something like that.

6)Get a Selfie Stick 

 Almost 70% of the time, we use GoPro with selfie stick. GoPro in itself is so small it can easily slip off our hands, but we do sometimes hold it and shoot with hands as well. So I have got Gopole which is a transparent waterproof selfie stick for one reason, that, I didn’t wanted my pole to be shown in videos because even by accidentally it does, it doesn’t look bad. However by certain angles, you wouldn’t get the selfie stick in the picture. You can also use general Selfie Stick with GoPro. I don't have GoPro remote so I don't know whether my mobile selfie stick remote would work. You can get GoPole from here


If you have gorilla pad tripod for your camera,you could use it on your wrist for go pro or to hold the go pro with your hands in general but do not use on a moving object, the shots may be shaky. We used it on our bikes though by wrapping it around the handle.




 7)Get Accessories 

 What accessories you need to buy would depend on what usage you have. We have gotten the starter kit from Amazon which has got a head mount and chest mount and various other accessories. The one we use the most if at all is Selfie Stick. I got the starter kit from here.

Head mount feels extremely uncomfortable sitting on your head, it feels like you are a miner going for work, it makes your hair go weird when you take it off and on and it feels heavy on your head. I have tried to use it but I highly dislike it.

Chest mount is a great option if you are going for adventure sports such as Ziplining, Cycling, Trekking, Skiing I would say go for Chest Mount because it would be more stable.

Head Mount also gives the perspective of viewing from above the head,which to me feels airy on the shots.

 Chest mount feels like you are giving a first hand perspective.

If you wish, you could use wrist mount but keeping your wrist stable, I wonder if that’s ever possible so your shots might come shaky! If you have head mount, you can make it a wrist mount by tying it twice and removing one strap. Skydiving shots are mostly taken with hand mounts or helmet mounts . 

Recently I got a comment on my Zipline video in Swiss Alps on how did I take my footage while Zip lining, this is how! Observe carefully





 Get Gopro Suction Mount(as its high quality) if you wish to capture Road trips. It doesn’t fall off which was our primary concern first time but you can easily put it on the front of your car or back window of your car or sides and it would stay. Just make sure before you do you wipe out dust and it stays. Just to be sure with heavy winds in Pacific Highway we had tied our suction cup with the base of windshield but you don’t have to. Suction mount creates suction, like an air trap inside when you press and sticks. Watch the video below, in this one we have use suction mount on our car.



Suction Mount is not recommended to be used on Surf Boards because they are curvy and so Adhesive Mounts are used. Adhesive mounts has more staying power and we haven't used it so far. It came with the pack but taking it off seems like a task by the instructions online. So, no for us.

 8)Hero 4 silver has a back screen and you can also control with your cellphone

 What I love about my GoPro Silver is, it has got a back screen that shows options, menus, your running screen which really helps in capturing anything without having to depend on my phone for controlling the movements which when we were comparing Black and Silver, we decided to go for Silver because of this very feature of back screen.

 However when you are using Selfie Stick, do use the control with the internal wifi on your phone which you would connect with GoPro app and you can view and capture from your phone too! You can also save media from GoPro to your phone using that internal wifi and when and where the real wifi comes share on social media.

Make sure to turn off the wifi or else you would see blue blink even after you might have had turned off your GoPro. If the blink doesn't go away, click the side button for a 1-2 minutes and it would.

 9)GoPro is ok with the photos 


 I have tried of be fond of GoPro pictures, but to be honest I am not so fond of GoPro photos. Somehow it feels very similar to the pictures which we click from our cellphones in spite of high resolution in case if the natural lighting is good. Also GoPro doesn't have a feature to focus unlike our cellphones. So I usually prefer taking photos with my phone than my GoPro unless its a wide angle. It doesn't take night shots as crisp as I would love it to, as I said its very similar to our phones when it comes to photos.

The best thing about GoPro is it takes wide angle pictures so wherever you wish to click Wide Angles, it does its work. So the places where you would wish to capture wide angles would be landscapes, races, waterfalls, sea, adventure sports, planes, cruises and etc.

It captures movements of clouds beautifully. 

 10)Gopro has lot of options like Timelapse, Videos with Photos, Nightmode and etc etc



 There’s a lot you can do with the small little thing called GoPro. We still haven’t used it as we thought we would, but when you would browse, you would see plenty of options. So you can set different resolution for pictures or videos before taking them, you can take a time-lapse, you can also keep the option as Video + Photos which is a great option because it takes videos, and depending on how much time have you set for pictures (i.e 5 sec, 10 sec) it would take photos with that time gap without having to interrupt the video till the end of the video. Timelapse may require a tripod or a stable place to keep your GoPro on..!

 All in all, we are still learning, but I thought to write the post because Mridula from Travel Tales of India has won a new GoPro (Congrats) and I just thought lets enlighten everyone with which I struggled with! And if there's anything you guys know more.. feel free to drop in comments so that I can add in to my post. You can also correct me anywhere you feel your experience with GoPro differs. I would love to know, because I am still getting acquainted to my GoPro!

Meanwhile, Shrinidhi has written an amazing post on GoPro Accessories with Comparisons, Price Rates and Genuine Reviews. Do check out his blogpost on 

Highly Recommended GoPro Mounts and Accessories
Read before buying GoPro

When we arrived San Francisco late afternoon, we just had 8 hours in hand to spare. Many readers might have acquainted themselves with Top Things To Do In San Francisco in my last post, but what they might have had missed was 'Live from the place' so there we go, as much as we could, our travel video contains our journey fun filled from Landing to Biking on Golden Gate to Ghirardeli chocolate processing to cable car rides and more from SFO..

The team of MESCO gets candid with Ankionthemove about all things Military and the new journey with Veer Yatra so far......!!!

  1. Tell us about yourself? 

Maharashtra Ex-servicemen Corporation (MESCO) is a Government of Maharashtra Undertaking was established on 18 Jan 2002 for the welfare and resettlement of ex-servicemen with the motto of “Service with Discipline”. MESCO's objective is to provide reasonable employment to ex-servicemen of the state nearest to their homes/within their district by undertaking various commercial activities. MESCO aims to re-habilitate the physically fit, mentally robust, disciplined and proficient Ex-Servicemen in outsourced services for any public, private and government organizations. Today, MESCO is working in 34 districts across the state of Maharashtra. It has bagged 274 contracts and has provided employments to approx. 8000 ex-servicemen. MESCO operates two toll plazas. Its Kargil Offset Printing Press at Satara is fully-automated and computerized to undertake all types of printing work. More than 2856 students have received diploma from MESCO’s Computer Training Centres at Satara, Pune and Ahmednagar.


 As head of the organization, Col. Jatkar is responsible for planning, repairs & maintenance of large population of Electronics Communication Equipment, Armaments and Weapons and Vehicles. He has a long record in the integrated manufacturing management including engineering, administration and quality assurance.

2. Tell us something about Veer Yatra? 

War and its intrigues are such a big part of worldwide history that they generate considerable interest in military sites, war strategy and weaponry involved. “Veer Yatra” is MESCO’s effort to give the real-life feel to these aspirations of the country’s youth. There is so much history, so much to see and so much to experience. We strongly feel the need to promote Military Tourism with a view to inculcate sense of patriotism among the children and youth of the country. Indian Military establishment has rich physical and emotional heritage that is worth exploring by all patriotic citizens. With “Veer Yatra”, MESCO is providing a formal structure to the citizens’ aspirations to feel the excitement of military life and offer insights into the lives of military personnel – how they negotiate inhospitable terrain and hostile conditions day-in and day-out to ensure that we stay secured all the time.

 3. What was your idea and inspiration behind the project? 



While Military Tourism is a well-established concept worldwide, it has not been explored in a structured way in India so far. War and its intrigues are such a big part of worldwide history that they generate considerable interest in military sites. A military association is looked up to very proudly by every Indian. A thought of being part of the military establishment comes in the mind of every individual at some point in their childhood or adolescence. We wanted to give the real-life feel to these aspirations of the country’s youth. There is so much history, so much to see and so much to experience. Indian Military establishment has rich physical and emotional heritage that is worth exploring by all patriotic citizens. “Veer Yatra” is MESCO’s attempt to provide civilians a feel of the military life and offer insights into the lives of military personnel – how they negotiate inhospitable terrain and hostile conditions day-in and day-out to ensure that we stay secured all the time. With India's large military, long borders, huge spread of "strategic" and often picturesque sites in the country, it is right time to explore Military Tourism.”

 4. What were the challenges that you faced for the project to be launched? 

As ex-servicemen, we are used to challenges. However, with Veer Yatra, we encountered challenges of different kinds. Typical challenges include – getting military establishments to allow civilians to visit military sites, working with travel support companies to provide “military style services” and creating an overall customer focused service organization.

5. Wouldn’t Veer Yatra require additional safety measures as civilians would be allowed to visit Military Installations? Would there be separate section in the installation for such tours? Are the tours limited only to students who would love to visit or is it open to all? Would there be specific dates and time to visit? 

While the basic requisites for participating in a Veer Yatra are the love for the country and passion for negotiating inhospitable terrain. While Veer Yatra is like any other tour, the destinations here would be unlike regular tours. The tours may involve visiting places with extreme weather, inhospitable terrain and high level of physical activity. While there will be opportunities for the tourists to do things that military men do, we have incorporated additional security measures such as adequate safety equipment, military discipline in managing tours and well planned and anticipated tours to ensure that civilians do not hurt themselves or get into any sort of trouble. We are sure the passionate youth of the country is ready to face difficulties to be able to experience the heroics of the military. There will not be separate sections, but the tourists will be able to get the feel of military life from the close quarters. Of course, the civilians won’t get access to areas that are sensitive from the security perspective. No, the tours are not limited to students. While we have tours especially designed for students, our tours are open to every citizen who loves the country and is passionate about its military heritage. We have also designed tours for executives from the corporate sector executives. We also encourage young girls and women to explore these tours and we have seen growing interest from women also. You might be surprised, but we have also received a number of queries from elderly people/senior citizens who are interested in exploring the country’s military heritage and we will be design tours for them, too. Tours are planned in advance so that logistical arrangements can be done in time. We aim to time our tours with special occasions when the people of the country get deeper insights into the military’s working.

 6. Since MESCO is a government of Maharashtra undertaking, would the future plan of expansion, include military tours to other states? 

We have started our tours with military sites in Maharashtra, Sikkim, Goa, J&K, etc. We are in discussions with the military establishments for facilitating tours in many other states, too.

 7. What is that one tour that you would recommend us to definitely do? 




All of MESCO’s “Veer Yatra” tours are designed to provide unique experience to the people who are passionate about the military life. Yet, it depends on your age and level of interest while selecting ideal tour that suits your requirements. We have short tours in and around Pune for young individuals in the age-groups 10-16 years. We also offer longer tours to the other locations such as Goa & Karwar, Gangtok & Darjeeling and Sonmarg & Amarnath. For people of Maharashtra, Konkan offers a number of interesting military sites with historical significance. MESCO’s Refreshing Konkan tour gives opportunity to explore beaches and forts in the Konkan region that people from Maharashtra would find interesting.

 8. If there's one social cause you'd love to contribute to in India, what would that be? 

We secured our borders so that the people of the country can live with a sense of security. However, we are aware that the people of the country are also fighting with the social issues. As ex-Servicemen, we would also like to contribute to any social cause that makes the country better and more secured. Apart from connecting the civilians with the military, we would also like to contribute to the government’s efforts to ensure supply of water and other essential supplies to the drought-stricken areas in the country.