Nice picture, Ajay ji. On 5 January 2012 22:45, Ajay Ramakrishnan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Though I am a brand new member of EFI, I have been passionate about flower > photos since August-September 2010. Around that time, I heard about Kaas > for the first time. But that year I was not able to plan the trip. In 2011, > I made the long awaited "pilgrimage" along with my brother and cousin > > But the dream almost became a nightmare... First, the Neeta Volvo that > took us overnight from Mumbai to Satara was 2 hours late. Then, the driver > dumped us on the highway instead of taking us to the Satara ST stand as > advertised on the Neeta website. Then, we had to pay an auto driver 90 > rupees just to take us the 3 or so kilometers to the stand. Then, we learnt > that we had just missed the 6:45 am ST bus to Mahabaleshwar that would have > taken us directly to the Kaas plateau and that the next bus was at 8 am, by > which time the sunlight could get too bright to take good photos. Then, we > asked a tourist taxi operator what he would charge for the round trip to > Kaas, and he quoted an eye-popping Rs. 1200 > > Okay, now for the twist. Telling the taxi driving con artist we'd get > back, the three of us started bargaining with some auto drivers near the > bus stand. One of them finally agreed to take us first to Kaas, then to > Thoseghar waterfalls, and then back to the ST stand in the afternoon, all > for Rs. 1200. We grudgingly agreed to the fare and hopped in. On the way to > Kaas, the hillside road was lined with beautiful flowers, including some > light blue morning glories that I had never seen before. But since I wanted > to reach Kaas by 7:30 am, which I had been told was the best time for > flower photography on the plateau, I sacrificed the blue ipomoeas and > probably many other rare morning flowers. But it was worth it, since the > auto driver stopped on top of the Kaas plateau, which was only slowly > filling up with tourists, at precisely 7:25 am > > We spent 90 minutes of exploring the plateau to find the few rare species > left other than smithias and balsams (it was already October 1, the fag end > of the season). Among the beautiful flowers we did find was this bunch of > Adenoon indicum - Blue Sonki. Hope you all like the photo (resolution > reduced for sending to the EFI group) > -- With regards, J.M.Garg ([email protected]) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmgarg1 'Creating awareness of Indian Flora & Fauna' The whole world uses my Image Resource of more than a *thousand species* & eight thousand images of Birds, Butterflies, Plants etc. (arranged alphabetically & place-wise): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:J.M.Garg. You can also use them for free as per Creative Commons license attached with each image. For identification, learning, discussion & documentation of Indian Flora, please visit/ join our Efloraofindia Google e-group: http://groups.google.co.in/group/indiantreepix (more than 1760 members & 1,00,000 messages on 21/12/11) or Efloraofindia website: https://sites.google.com/site/efloraofindia/ (with a species database of more than 6000 species). Also author of 'A Photoguide to the Birds of Kolkata & Common Birds of India'.
