Kaas - The Valley of Flowers in Maharashtra - Our Adventure to Satara - Part 4

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Next morning we started for Kaas early after the breakfast. Today the weather was better – the sun was still hidden behind the murky clouds but it was not raining like the previous day, which was big relief. We were a bit more enthusiastic than the day before as we were venturing to see Maharashtra's own 'valley of flowers', in fact not only flowers, but also the valley of rare orchids and flora of diversified characteristics.

The beauty of the nature unfolded pretty soon in front of us. We were climbing uphill through the roundabout roads which were bestowed heavily by the greeneries around. Through the greeneries, there were magnificent white streams of small waterfalls. The frequent green and white combinations were killer attractions on the way.

At one place, we found a lot of white flowers bloomed and the ethereal beauty of the place made us stop. Soon we found there were loads and loads of wild flowers at both the sides of the roads. Birds were chirping and water droplets fell on the ground with a gentle sound – occasional sound of passing by automobiles faded away when we entered a narrow path as a detour. The scene mesmerized us while the silence overpowered us and we just could not move.

The driver must have run out of patience since he honked repeatedly. We came back to the material world. We started towards Kaas once again.

After around an hour of a spectacular drive through the heavenly atmosphere, we reached a plateau, which was covered under a carpet of green and yellow. As long as the eyes could see, the flower beds could be seen. We were literally speechless.  The only words we could babble were ‘OMG’, ‘Wow’, ‘Gosh’.

There were no one around and we were the first to be arrived at the plateau, which was an amazing feeling.  The road seemed to be endless at a distance, while the flower beds at both the sides created a magical surrounding and it is bound to attract you towards itself, like a magnet attracts iron. We went down, very close to the flowers to have a closer look, without trampling on them.  Since it was not the peak season (which was after a couple of more weeks), the flowers, we noticed, just started to bloom. This plateau had two distinguished set of flowers – one yellow-petal-red-half-moon-in centre and another violet colored beauty.

Our driver informed us that this was not even the place we were originally looking for – we were spellbound, this place was not the famous Kaas Plateau, it was further ahead. He also informed that the after a couple of weeks, the whole place will be covered by the flowers, even the green beds could not be seen.

Unfortunately, our luck left us at that point and the rain started with heavy winds and next to zero visibility.

We drove further ahead and reached a point which was considered to be the ‘official Kaas plateau of flowers’. There was a security guard who advised us not to park there as parking on the plateau was banned. Since it was raining heavily we pleaded to him to allow us to park and we prmised that we would leave within 30 minutes after taking some photographs. He smiled and nodded after some time. That really felt like a divine bliss.

We could not actually enjoy the whole plateau since the visibility was beyond our capability to penetrate. But we could see the plateau covered by blue and violet flower beds here. A little bit of sunshine was desperately wanted but we didn’t have that luck. We spent some 10-15 minutes there after clicking some photographs of those unworldly beauties. We wanted to spend more time there but the weather didn’t let us do it.

Driving further up we reached the Kaas parking where everyone nowadays have to park the car and have to walk towards the Plateau, which should be quite a long distance to walk on. There was a small tea-stall where we had the famous ‘Wada-Pav’s and tea. The Kaas Lake was in close vicinity so we didn't want to miss that out. It was so windy and misty that tall trees looked like a bunch of ghosts standing with outstretched arms. The rain did not subdued, rather the ferocity increased and the shore of the Kaas lake was in a complete mess of mud. Taking the camera out was very risky, but we clicked some pictures of the Kaas lake, all of them came as hazed under the moisture and wind.

We came back to parking place and started roaming around a bit. The flora was amazing by the sides of the road. The greens were so pleasing to eyes. The colors of the flowers blotted all memories of the urbane society that we claim to belong to. One simply becomes the same with nature where the charm is so incredibly rustic.

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