Sahyadrica

I had decided to take a break for a month, but now I’m taking a break from the break since I was compelled to write about my visit to this Sanctuary on 15, 16 October 2011. I woke up before the alarm went off and peered through the window into darkness. I did not sleep well that night – shifting restlessly in the bed, awaiting the break of dawn. With hesitation I looked, hoping that it wore the colour blue, praying that it were not shrouded in the dark by a delayed force that had caught us by surprise last evening. But it was blue, and that meant a clear beginning for the day. I smiled, and cleared my mind of last night’s invasion by a thunderstorm. We reached Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary at noon the previous day – two rogues on a long road trip round the Sahyadris – from the humid coastal plans of the Arabian Sea to the tall cool plateaus and peaks overlooking the central plains far in east. Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary is situated on the brink of a humongous cliff ...

When the clouds do not hinter the sun from baking the ground all day, it is said that the monsoon is set to leave. On one such day, we went to explore a nearby Protected Area, the Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. I had not visited this place in three years, and I was waiting in anticipation for the time to come, which did come on the last weekend of the monsoon season of 2011.  Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary Tungareshwar is a sanctuary that I’ve talked about in brief in my very first post, and also as the very last escape for many animals in Revisiting Nagla Block , that mainly focused on Nagla Block being a corridor joining Sanjay Gandhi National Park with Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary. And if SGNP is the lung of Mumbai, Nagla Block is the heart, and TWS is the last leg – one that does not lead any further, except into villages and vast fields of rice and other crops. The north of TWS is devoid of any forestlands for miles save for small pockets, until we reach a few rema...