Birding and Photography Blog By Ritesh.: 2008

KAS flowers – Sept 2008

As soon as the monsoon starts receding, various floras start springing up from the ground, bearing colorful beauties, known as the wildflowers. These always pose as a intriguing subject to nature enthusiasts and photographers to devote some attention. Their beauty can affect any sensitive intellect in way to leave it amazed and suspended in exaltation.

The wildflowers bloom in several parts of Western Ghats. The beauty of “Sahya”mountains (Western Ghats) is that it has created different regions with unique topography, soil type and climate, because of which we can observe a stunning floral spectrum from region to region with wide diversity. KAS is one of such site in Sahyadris, in Maharashtra, that stuns you with the sheer number of flowers and astonishing patterns their groups form.

Personally I felt blessed on the time of first visit to this place, and was proud to see that such a phenomenal thing exists so close to us. I therfore made a point to visit it in every september.

KAS is approximately 20 Kms from Satara city in Maharashtra which is well connected to major cities like Pune, Kolhapur by road and rail. The Satara bears this name form the seven hills/forts around the city (The fort is locally called as “tara” in Marathi, and “sat” means Seven).

This year, me and my wife visited the place on 14th September. We reached satara on 13th Septemebr evening and next day we hired an auto-rickshaw from the city, for fare of 350Rs, to take us upto KAS lake. But we were little disappointed to see heavy rain and winds blocking the way to reach to plateau and have leisurely walk and gaze on the wildflowers. The slopes were however accessible. Though we missed the star attraction species and floral scenery at the top, it wasn’t bad as everything was not missed.

This year is the year for mass flowering of Karvi, and we saw that mass flowering of Karvi. The hill conehead or topali karvi was abundant on slopes and literally it was blue everywhere. The regular flowers such as Sonaki, Common Balsam and Smithia were also in large number on the top.

When we reached to top it was raining heavily and we couldn't get down at all. So there i missed chance to photograph.

Here are some of the photographs I could make while exploring the slopes region.I hope you would like some of them.

Credit of all the photographs goes to my wife, who allowed me to shift my attention from her to on the flowers, and helped to photograph them in every possible way.

Cheers!!!

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