Flowers always attract me. The purity in their petals, shades of colors are the key players in this game of attraction. It really doesn’t matter how small or big a flower is, it always looks cute. Just imagine you are lying on a flat ground full of grass and wildflowers! They have got all the shades of yellow, pink, purple, blue, and many others! Wow .. Doesn’t it sound great? But for me, this was not just an imagination! I experienced this for the first time in my life..
Last Saturday was full of fun and some amazing views of flora for us. We had decided to visit Kas- satara, valley of flowers. Me along with couple of my friends were all geared up with camera, goggles, jacket, etc to make the trip memorable and safe. We started pretty early on Saturday. Yeah, 0650 in Saturday morning is surely early, right? It was an absolutely fresh morning. My friends hopped on their shining steed and booming charger. The one with booming charger was a new comer in the class, at least for a ride of 150 Kms. He had altogether different purpose for the ride though. We started from Aundh to Chandni chowk and got on the Pune-Bangalore highway i.e. NH4.The cool winds were soothing my mind. We reached old Katraj tunnel and whoa!!! What we saw was a whole lot of orange colored wild flowers. It’s highly difficult for me to explain the delicacy of those flowers. Those were seasonal flowers and you would find them right from Katraj tunnel to Shirval, at NH4. We clicked some very nice snaps out there and started further journey.
We reached Shindewadi and munched on spicy "Misal Pav" with a cup of tea. We decided the next stop would be at 1st satara junction. While deciding, we failed on our estimation keeping our friend with the booming charger’s speed in mind. Leave alone 1st Satara junction, he didn’t stop for the next 2 junctions too. When we realized that he missed the 1st junction, we raised our speed and got in parallel with him after few kms. I waved my hand and showed a sign of oh-plz-stop-it-now. I am thankful to God, all this happened just at the beginning of third Satara junction. On the speedy NH4, we dared to take a U-turn, yeah the vehicle drivers in that lane must have cursed us for showing such insanity, but we couldn't help it much. We reached the junction by taking the service road; the expressway was passing over from the junction. We started heading towards Satara city.
Though people curse districts like Satara, specifically other than Mumbai and Pune, for they are less developed, they must see the infrastructure of Satara, the huge court building, several colleges on the main road in a row, the statue of Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil. All these buildings were a great pleasure to watch. From the Shivaji Statue, we took a left turn and headed straight towards the Kas valley. Oh again, we underestimated the speed of the booming charger! Yes somehow, we again lost him from our eyesight. I really thank Mr. Martin Cooper for his great invention of Mobile phone. Or else it would have been difficult to locate where the charger was heading towards! We again got him back with us. We would have passed few Kms and ohh... what we saw there.. We had reached the top of the mountain and could see flat land which had valleys at all its borders. It was completely covered by yellow colored wildflowers and fresh green grass. The road was quite narrow, hence parking was strictly allowed only at left side of the road. We parked our machines at left side and there we went on to enjoy the freshness and greenery, calling us to offer incredible pleasure. We spent almost 15-20 minutes with the grand lottery of flowers and then headed towards the kas valley and dam.
The road was a curvy one directing us from one hill top to another. We reached the destination, and one thought hit my mind "Why didn’t we come here on any random weekday??" . Yes, by the look of it, we could guess there were around 100-125 four wheeler and double of them were two wheelers. Gosh! From the number plates, it could be guessed that people came there all the way from Mumbai, Pune, Konkan and north Maharashtra. So many people spread across the flat lands, enjoying the grass and different wildflowers covering the lands.
I was assuming people have just come to see and capture nice snaps! But I was wrong there were these botany students and their teachers, who were specifically observing each and every flower type and making a note of the same in the charts they were carrying. Some had got huge and fantastic SLR cams to capture every petal of the flower clearly. I looked at mine, smiled and started capturing maximum I could do. We wanted to find a way out of the oversized crowd and make our way to the Kas dam. We jumped on our machines and were looking forward to kas dam.
It again had a nice curvaceous road with amazing view side by. We reached the Kas dam in next 5 minutes. It didn’t let our expectation down. It had such clear water, that you could actually see the soil, fishes through it. The sun was taking a toll on us. We didn’t fail to capture the awesome view in camera and in our memories. We started the journey back to Pune, hoping to find a good restaurant on the way. Instead of restaurant, we found an exhibition cum sale on the return journey. Being a girl I didn’t mind to have a look at it. Not to mention, of course we shopped some stuff there and again started our search for restaurant. We found it at the same junction from where we came in. Might be because of the hunger or maybe it was indeed delicious, we really enjoyed the food they served. The lunch was incomplete without a sweet dish. Yes, we ordered a fruit custard. Trust me! In my entire life I have never eaten such delicious fruit custard. It was amazingly prepared as well as decorated. With happy heart we took a leave from Satara and started our journey on NH4 towards Pune. The shining steed was flying instead of just running on the road. The booming charger was following us. We entered Aundh in just 2 hours.
The whole journey of 300+ Kms was accomplished safe and sound. The flowers had made their place in my heart for forever. They will get vanished with receding monsoon, soon. The monsoon is still not over, and I am looking forward to next monsoon.
