Beautiful capture, Ajay ji ... and well the story of Kaas is interesting. Hope you get there next time very smoothly and get to lot of beauties.
Regards. Dinesh On Fri, Jan 6, 2012 at 4:05 PM, Rajesh Sachdev <[email protected]> wrote: > Ajayji nice pic of this Mothi Sonaki... > > > -- > Regards > Rajesh Sachdev > http://www.facebook.com/leopardguy > > >>> >>> 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) >>>> >>> >>> > > >
