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Carpet of blossoms

Kaas plateau
Last Updated 18 October 2014, 14:37 IST

Seven years ago, my trek to the Valley of Flowers National Park in the Himalayas was a mesmerising journey at 13,000 feet above sea level.

The scenery there comes back to my mind’s eye, conjuring beautiful images of clouds kissing me and flowers dancing around in the light breeze on the slopes of the mountains, as streams cascade to form lovely lakes below.

Hence, my visit to the other ‘Valley of Flowers’ in the south-western part of the country started with trepidation. Would the spectacle erase out my well-preserved memories of the former? Though I tried hard not to compare them and went with an open mind, what I saw completely reinforced my awe towards natural beauty and its healing powers.

Plateau of fame

The UNESCO has included this plateau known as Kaas, in the Satara district of south Maharashtra, on its list of World Heritage Sites. According to UNESCO’s description, the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas and represent geomorphic features of immense importance with unique biophysical and ecological processes.

The site’s high-montane forest ecosystems influence the Indian monsoon weather pattern. Moderating the tropical climate of the region, the site presents one of the best examples of the monsoon system on the planet. It has an exceptional level of endemism and is recognised as one of the world’s eight ‘hottest hotspots’ of biological diversity. The forests of the site include some of the best representatives of non-equatorial tropical evergreen forests anywhere, and are home to at least 325 globally threatened flora, fauna, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish species. 

The drive to Kaas is 23 km from the town of Satara through a good road that gives you splendid views of mountains and lakes. We saw a group of nature lovers running a marathon along this route. Since it was a weekend, there were many tourists who had parked along the way to enjoy the scenic views. But it’s the sudden surge of tourists that has posed a threat to the fragile ecological balance of the region. 

Survey revelations

According to the Forest Department, the flood of tourists during the monsoons, when the flowers are in bloom, sometimes reaches 50,000 in a day, when they ought to keep the numbers down to a mere 2,000. Hence, the joint forest management committee has been formed along with the locals of Kaas to keep the number of tourists restricted. This is a tough feat to achieve. We witnessed many tourists argue and blatantly refuse to obey the guards, and park their vehicles in no-parking zones, trampling the flowers in the process . The parking area is around 2 km away, and tourists just don’t feel like walking that distance, preferring to disregard nature’s beauty.

These and other issues are highlighted in the book Kaas Plateau of Flowers by Dr Sandeep Shrotri. “The plateau enjoys the status of being the ‘Valley of Flowers’ of the Sahyadris. A botanist’s paradise, the valley is a colourful carpet woven with herbs, orchids, bulbous and tuberous plants that flower profusely during the monsoons,” he writes, adding that man has failed to appreciate nature’s wealth, as the plateau’s flowers have been reduced drastically from how they were five years ago. 

The Western Ghats are home to over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 1,700 of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. The Kaas Plateau is home to around 800 species of flowers, some of which are murdannia simplex, impatiens oppositifolia (lavender), wild brinjal flower, begonia crenata, chlorophytum glaucoides, persicania glabra, senecio grahamii etc.

A walk around the plateau is sure to fill your senses with delight, as the flowers gently nod in the breeze and coax you to bend down and look at their beauty. The colours, textures and leaf shapes leave you spellbound.

 Every step leads you to a new variety of flower. Since the plateau is like a table top, you can get on your knees and take an eye-level look to appreciate the interwoven pattern of the carpet of blooms. It is a virtual living laboratory for botany enthusiasts. However, the issue of diminishing flowers is a wake-up call for us to preserve this fragile eco-system.

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(Published 18 October 2014, 14:37 IST)

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