A race with the dawn

On Saturday evening, Feb 20th I have decided to capture the daybreak at the bay with my new Canon A1100 IS camera. I noted the Sunday sunrise time to be at 6:29 a.m IST and set my alarm to 5:00 a.m. It is usually unusual that I plan to get up so early. Even if I plan, I fail 90% of the times unless and until my parents are around.And, today the chances of me not waking up doubled as I went to bed as late as 1:00 a.m yesterday.
The alarm cuckooed at 5:00 a.m. Half asleep and with contracted pupils I took a look at my cell phone - the source of the sound. Involuntarily my hands responded to silence the sound and I fell asleep again. But, you know when you are really determined about a thing, it haunts your subconscious - asleep or awake, alive or dead. This thing( to reach the beach before daybreak) in me took 45 minutes to fight my sleep and at about 5:45 a.m forced my eyes to open. I got up at 5:48 precisely, went through the required ablutions and got on to my bike with camera tightly tucked in a turkey napkin, which was tightly packed into a camera bag and which in turn went into a backpack- safety purpose, my cam is hardly a month old baby.
It was 6:05 before I hit the road and all I had was 15 minutes. The coast I planned to reach is along Thiruvanmiyur which is 22 km away from my place. 22km in 15 minutes is a improbable equation, while I was musing thus a realization dawned upon me that made me feel stupid. I could go to beach on ECR which is some 10 km nearer and is as pristine as I wanted a beach to be. To reach ECR, I had to go straight from Sholingnallur junction instead of taking a left turn here.
With this realization I headed for ECR at my top speed.
The connecting road from Sholingnallur to ECR a 4 KM drive is a real pleasant drive. A six lane wide road which goes up a small mount and smoothly descends towards the beach. The road would have been even better if it offered a direct sea view, but phew not so lucky. Nevertheless I liked the road and crows did share the same view. Why I say crows and exclude all other avian species is I see only crows squatting in the middle of the road. It could be pollution or it could be any other factor that made other species stay away.However, I get to disturb the tranquility of crows alone. At the sight of my bike approaching them, the murder of crows flew away. The instance reminds me of pigeons leaving their green ground at the sight of an approaching cricket ball in Lords cricket stadium. After a 2 minute drive along this 4 KM stretch, I reached the the ECR road. It was only once I had been to this beach and had to stop over, briefly, to inquire the directions to the shore. I got the directions from early customers of a tea shop in the ECR junction and sped away to the shore. It was 6:20 when I reached the beach. I hurriedly got down the bike, loaded the camera with batteries and off I went to capture the dawn.
Find those pictures in the below post. Happy daybreak !!