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Kaas Maharashtra's own Valley of Flowers
Kass Plateau located around 26KM from Satara is an amazing plateau with a wide variety of wild flowers which bloom in September give the place a heavenly feel. Travellors have noted that indeed with every passing weeks the colors of the plateau changes with the flowering cycle of the wild flowers. The place was indeed beautiful and it was nothing short of heavenly. I have heard about Kaas, and had it in my list of must visit places.
Prologue
One fine day in July 2010 Starvegabond floats a thread on a TBHP meet at Kaas.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/team-b...s-pg-27-a.html.
He was inspired by the thread by TBHpian Genesis.
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...u-flowers.html.
The idea was an instant hit.
TBHPian Ashish Pallod and MX6 set the pace and many more pitched in. The thread ran into 42 pages, and over 600 posts, and nearly 30,000 views. A lot of TBHPians from Pune and Mumbai loved the idea of a drive, and led the idea forward. Ashish with his knowledge of the area sets the date of our visit to the last weekend of September 2010, 25.09.2010 and 26.09.2010. TBHPian Turboholic from Satara was very kind in helping the out of towners in securing a booking at good hotels in Satara. So with the dates and stay options frozen, it was time for roll call.
The usual confirmation, dropouts, etc..etc.. happened for a while from July till mid September. By mid September 2010 the meet had the aura of a mega one. TBHPians from Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune and Delhi for the Kaas drive. At this point the confirmations were 40 plus.
Then uncertainties struck. On 17th September 2010, Allahabad High Court refused to defer Ayodhya verdict on 24th September 2010.
Allahabad HC refuses to defer Ayodhya verdict - Times Of India. This means we were unsure about the scenes after the verdict and the entire drive was in question for the first time just 7 days before the decided date:Frustrati.
To add to that, there was the threat of a petrol pump strike too. Due to these uncertainties, many confirmed TBHPians backed out. Some TBHPians did the visit the previous weekend too to avoid missing the beauty of Kaas.
Ashish stood his ground, the meet is still on. If the verdict is on 24th, see the reactions on 25th, and go on 26th if all is well. That inspired me and Starvegabond from Bangalore. TBHPian Khoj left from Delhi on 21.09.2010 for the meet. Inspired me and Starvegabond had a chat on 22.09.2010 Wednesday - a short one too at that.
Starvegabond : "Schools are closed on 24.09.2010 Friday, does that give you some ideas?"
Me : "Yes, why not we drive early and reach Satara before the verdict?"
Starvegabond : "Yes, let us do that. We'll travel on 23.09.2010 Thursday afternoon, reach Satara by midnight"
Me : "Good idea, that makes us reach Satara, and we are not in transit when the verdict is announced. Then based on the scenes we can decide ahead. Anyway we have Friday, Saturday and Sunday at our disposal."
Starvegabond : "Let us do that."
Me : " Yes, I'll meet you at your place by 13:00PM tomorrow."
Starvegabond : "That's the plan then."
Me : "Yes"
And we were decided on doing the trip. TBHPians from Bangalore dropped out, except anainar and us.
We started from Bangalore on 23.09.2010 Thursday by 14:00PM. And by 15:00PM supreme court defers the verdict by a week. All is well once again, and we were on the roll already.
We reached Satara by 02:00AM the next day. From TBHP we came to know the Mumbai and Pune TBHPians are meeting as planned and the meet is on as planned on Saturday. And we have already reached Satara by Friday. So we decided to have a short sight seeing on our own on Friday and attend the TBHP mega meet on Saturday. We met many TBHPians. Now I have a face to their handles. Ashish, MX6, Khoj, nomadabhi, turboholic, anainar, gostel, pjbiju, f1fan ....
Starvegabond wrote about the trip here
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...smiri-way.html
I was quite busy and was not keeping pace with his log, and mostly since I was not able to capture the beauty of the place in my camera. Starvegabond caught me many times sitting near the flowers with my camera switched off, and lost in thoughts.
Such was the beauty of Kaas plateau.
Why almost an year after our trip I'm writing all these?
1 ) It is because the next season is due in September 2011.
2 ) I saw some posts again on the meet thread last week from nomadabhi, that a TV9 news line said Kaas is going to be closed for the public by the Forest Department. Being such a fragile environment, such an action is welcome. A restriction is a requirement, the place cannot handle the amount of visitors, and the wild flowers were not cared for by many of the visitors. A vigilant forest department with clear restrictions and dos and dont's are welcome. I'll leave that to the authorities to decide in the best interest of the place and ecosystem.
Through this log I want to only let all the future visitors be sensitized towards the environment at Kaas. Please don't pluck those wild flowers nor stamp them while you're there. That much alone will let that place be alive for our next generations.
Please note that I am ashamed at my inability to capture the beauty of the place through my camera. Also I am learning the finer bits of the vast subject called photography.
Recently I came to understand a lot about colors and have understood that my previous two or three travelogues had pictures which looked weird, either washed out, lacking color, overly saturated etc..etc.. I have read a few details on the same and came to understand the importance of choosing the right color space to edit and present to the web. But with the vastly changing technological jargon's I still feel I am inexperienced. So a request to my readers is, please feel free to criticize the pictures I post if it looks weird. Also, please help me with some data from your end - which Operating system and Browser you used to view the picture and how is the picture weird to give me a clear understanding of the topic called color space. Let us not discuss this topic of photography beyond that feedback in this thread, we can take such deep technical discussions to the photography thread.
This trip was done in 2010 September - 23.09.2010 to 25.09.2010.
I was a co passenger in Starvegabond's ANHC, along with his family. My family did not join me in this trip. How much I wanted them to see this place - I only know.
Hopefully I'll take them there this year. The beautiful ANHC which took us to Kaas
We started from Bangalore on 23.09.2010 at 13:45PM. We reached our Hotel at Satara by 02:00AM on 24.09.2010.
The mega multi city TBHP meet was on 25.09.2010
We started from Satara on 25.09.2010 at 17:15PM and reached Bangalore by 05:00AM on 26.09.2010
This year Kaas meet is on. Ashish already has hinted the same. More on that in the meet thread.
Day 01, 23rd September 2010 Bangalore - Satara
After finishing my last minute priorities at office, I drove to Starvegabond's place, parked my Civvy there and got into his ready ANHC and started the best drive that we ever had by 13:45PM.
Starvegabond usually beats the traffic till Tumkur by an interior road via Dobbaspet from his place. I was new to that route and since he usually uses that road I pretty much relaxed and started enjoying the scenes outside the window.
The roads in front of us
Starvegabond was on some discussion with his senior colleague and missed the turn towards Dobbaspet. I was ignorant of the detour. We landed up in a place called Gauribidanur.
Everything in life happens for good. What else do you need than to just land up in a beautiful sunflower field and find that such a beautiful place existed within 30 minutes of where you stay? Amazing. I was spell bound by the beauty of the place.
Some pictures from the beautiful Sunflower fields near Gauribidanur.
continued...
Day 01, 23rd September 2010 Tumkur - Satara
We reached Tumkur by 16:45PM and drove on. We stopped for tea break at VRL Chitradurga around 17:30PM. We started our journey again by 18:00PM.
The sky was already painted in different hues. Took some picture while we were on the move - a rare luxury for me :)
Blessings
Windmills at Chitradurga Sun sets for a change from the highway :)
We drove on and reached our favourite hotel Sankam at Belgaum for dinner by 22:00PM. After a decent dinner we started our journey by 23:30PM.
We eventually reached Satara by 02:00AM and checked into Hotel Maharaja Residency. They were expecting us, we just signed the register took our keys, and went directly to our rooms in 10 minutes and crashed.
Our detour on day 1
This detour made us find the hidden sunflower fields near Bangalore :)
Day 02, 24th September 2010 Kaas
A little later the place was all foggy
We parked the ANHC
We went to the nearby Koyna, and sat on the banks.
This picture is from Starvegabond. I really missed my PPGs there. But Starvegabond's cute angel never let me feel that.
After sitting there for almost half an hour we left towards Bamnoli
We reached Bamnoli by 13:30PM
continued...
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