My Scottish Highlands Experience
What do you imagine when you think of the Scottish Highlands? Hurry coo (hairy cow)? Green landscape? Yes, and yes.
Visiting the Scottish Highlands has been on my list for a while now, and it finally happened this year. I don’t exactly know why all I know was that it’s extremely green. The first week of 2014, I had an opportunity to roam around the Highlands. Scotland, especially the Highlands, is like a playground for any photographer. The colors, the scenery, the dim light, the wildlife, and the atmosphere; everything about it is just worth paying attention.
We took a train to Inverness, in the heart of the Scottish Highlands. The River Ness flows through the city center, creating a charming scene. Inverness is a great place to start touring the Highlands. The famous Loch Ness is just six miles down the road, mountains are 45 minutes away by car, and it is well connected to the rest of the Highlands. As they say, this city is the gateway to the Highlands.
For a few days in the Highlands, we visited many popular sites such as Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle, Cairngorm Mountain, Highland Wildlife Park, but more importantly, we explored a true Scottish forest in the middle of nowhere. We went off the road to look for photogenic bothies (stone houses), walk around cushiony forests, examine mosses and trees in the rain. Two of the most memorable moments were when we stumbled upon a stone house with a red railing and a red phone booth in front of it and finally tracked down a bothy with a red door. It was an ideal working-holiday for me.
On the train ride back to Edinburgh, we were glued to the window, pointing at things that we would’ve loved to capture with our cameras. Abandoned bothies, green rolling hills just like the Windows’ Desktop image, animals on the hill, and the colors… I felt the boiling passion in my right index finger. Well, I just have to go back, don’t I?
Thanks Matt (Expert Vagabond) for your relentless effort to find bothies, and Lisa for going off-roading with us!
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