Monday 22 September 2008

Karvy Trail

Sat was a busy day. Went to the CS museum in the afternoon to catch the BNHS @ 125 yrs exhibition. Also ended up seeing the special Musical Heritage of India exhibit. Went to Andheri later to catch the Landmark sale - got the entire Sherlock Holmes collection for a steal.

Went to the Goregaon part of the SGNP for a nature trail on Sunday morning, the objective being to see the Karvy flower that blooms once every 8 years in this part of the country.

Walked up to the CEC from Film City at around 8.00 and noticed a lot of cars on my way there. On reaching the CEC I found a good sized crowd already present - students, families, NRI's, individuals, photographers, seasoned trekkers, etc., etc. - and more people kept streaming in.

I registered quickly and took a few pics of flowers in the butterfly garden as the organisers got things organised. This is the first time I've used my camera's macro settings, as I've never had to take close ups before. Found the experience painful but rewarding.

The main problem I faced was manually focusing the camera on what I wanted it to focus on. When you're a few centimetres away from a flower, it seems to take up your whole screen and your camera has a mind of it's own, focusing on a distant petal when you want it to focus on the nearest one instead.

I've never seen so many people show up on a nature trail. With the BNHS it's mostly around 20-25 people. But I was told later that the Rotary club had a hand in organising this event and that explained the crowd. Was nice to see so many nature lovers though.

A couple of groups started off on their trails with various guides. I waited for a familiar face and eventually joined the group led by Sanal Nair and Sunjoy Monga. I know Sanal from the Silonda trek earlier this monsoon and it was nice to finally see and hear Sunjoy Monga - I own one of his books.


Started off on the trail at around 8.30. Immediately came across Karvy clumps.

Also saw a spider,
brackets on the underside of a tree stump, some yellow flowers, Spiral ginger, a lizard, a colony of brackets, a stick insect, and a snake skin molt but unfortunately no snake. All in all, very enjoyable.

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1 comment:

Sarvesh Kantak said...

Hi Daniel,

It's been pleasure reading ur blog.
Pl lemme know ur email-id/messenger id.. wuld like to talk to u regarding Nature Trails.

Regards,
Sarvesh

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