Kaas - Bamnoli: Maharashtra's Valley of Flowers

In tourism, Mini is very big and popular. There are places like mini-Kashmir, mini-Switzerland all over India and places like Little India, Little Italy, China town all over the world. when the real place is very far away, we look for its miniature version close by. There is a mini-Kashmir in Aarey Colony in Mumbai, Tapola in Mahabaleshwar. There is mini-Switzerland in Khajjiar and Kashmir is called India's Switzerland. Switzerland itself has a miniature Switzerland in Lugano !!

In this list, Kaas should be added as mini-Valley of Flowers. Kaas plateau is called Maharashtra's Valley of Flowers.

After our trip to Sajjangadh, the next day we started off to Kaas. As we leave Satara and reach the tunnel, instead of going straight, we need to take the right which takes us on the road to Kaas and Bamboli. A few kilometers into this route, we can get a view of the entire Satara with the Ajinkyatara fort on its back.

As we move along the road, there is great view all around us with stretches of land turning into huge mountains. The road itself turns into a straight road on the top of another montain. It is a big stretch of plateu on the top of a mountain.

We came to a place where there were lots of cars parked and people were enjoying the surroundings. We parked our car and went to enjoy this valley of flowers. There is a stretch of the plateu which is filled with tiny pink and purple flowers. The flower itself are very small but with millions of them lying on the ground, the plateu turns into a beautiful bed of flowers.

After spending about an hour there, we moved ahead towards Bamnoli.

Bamnoli is a village at a corner of the Shivajisagar Lake or Koyna Backwaters. The lake is simply majestic. Its huge with hundreds of square kilometers of water. There are boating facilities here which take you to the various places within the lake. The prominent among them are the Triveni Sangam, Shiva Temple and Tapola.

These are all motorboats which seat around 10-15 people. By this time, it was time for lunch. But, there were very few options available for lunch here. The hotels take around 1 hour to prepare the lunch after we place an order. There were no options for Jain lunch as well. We took the food that we had brought along. We booked the boat with another family. We had to wait for some 20 minutes as there was quite a rush by now.

The boat ride was nice and long and reminded me of the boat ride from Phnom Penh to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. At the start of the ride, it feels good to be riding on the water and enjoying the scenery around. However, when the ride is long and into a big lake like this, after some time, we are surrounded just by the water. You can just see water everywhere. There is no sight of land. And, this is the time that the boat ride turns a bit boring looking at just water and nothing else. I wonder how people spend days and months at sea.

Luckily, the water sickness did not last long and we anchored at Shiva temple after about 1/2 hour. The location of the temple was excellent with the cool breeze and fresh water all around. The statue of Ganesh over there is very nice.

After spending about half an hour, the boat took us back to the Bamnoli village.

Enjoying the sights and some waterfalls on the way, we drove back to Pune with the memories of 2 days spent in lovely places.

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© Paras Doshi, 2009.