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Heaven on earth! Someone said as we looked down to the mountain ranges and lush green forest in front of an old abandoned bungalow at Mahadevgarh in Amboli ghats.
Amboli is a hill station situated in the south of Maharashtra at about 700 meters. It is also known as rain heaven or Maharashtra’s Cherapunji. It rains as much as 750 centimeters annually. It is a very popular tourist location but it is a place of great opportunities for environmentalists. The area is very rich in its flora and fauna and very much unexplored. The monsoon in the area is magical with dense fog, a green blanket of nature and many calls of various frogs and birds.
We visited these ghats in the month of September 2014 for a college excursion. Probably it was our last trip together so everyone wanted to make it as memorable as they can. And like any other nature lover, we all were also fascinated by the beauty of that place.
As we got down from local transport bus at Amboli bus depot, all we could see is dense fog in all directions and hardly anything beyond some distance. It was cool and much more pleasant than our polluted city. The fresh air and aroma of wet soil was soothing. With all our bags we checked in to our hotel. Soon after getting fresh we all were ready to start our nature trail with all our cameras.
As soon as we went inside a forested area, we were welcomed with songs of several frogs and toads and some birds in between and the rains provided background music for all of it. Soon we were getting to know about various frogs and toads which we saw. We were lucky to spot Amboli Toad and Malabar Gliding Frog and its nest as well. Both these species are endemic to Western Ghats and endangered as well. As we were looking for other interesting things, one of my friends shouted “snake”. We all ran towards him and our guide introduced us to one of the most beautiful snakes of the area ‘Nilgiri or Beddome’s Keelback’.
Later in the day, when we were on night trail we decided to visit another area. Night time is probably better time to look for snakes. Still due to rains we didn’t find any for a long time. All were kind of disappointed and were looking for them desperately when all of a sudden I saw very well camouflaged ‘Green Vine Snake’ in one of the shrubs. All were happy to see the first sighting of our night trail. Soon we spotted ‘Malabar Pit Viper’ and ‘Bamboo Pit Viper’ as well. But highlight of the night trail was when my friend spotted five ‘Malabar Pit Viper’ on one tree and three ‘Bamboo Pit Viper’ on a tree just right next to it.
During our trails we also saw many beautiful flowers, trees and also many other frogs, toads, geckos, lizards, spiders and insects. Our last trail was at Mahadevgarh. On our way we again found ‘Green Vine Snake’ and this time we were able to click photographs of this amazing creature. When we reached the Mahadevgarh, the ruins of an old abandoned bungalow were standing there telling us the story of its history. It didn’t looked any less than a horror film set. The bungalow belonged to the British officers who used to rule the area before independence as a guest house.
Soon we started looking for some frogs and scorpions in those ruins and we were amazed to find few beautiful frogs and some geckos. As we looked for them by turning every possible rock, one of my friends got lucky to find a Caecilian species as well. Caecilians are generally hard to find and here was one right in front of us posing for our cameras. As we roamed around the bungalow we came across one side of its lawn and we were blessed with the astonishing view of the valley right in front of us. There were mountain ranges creating a boundary near horizon and beautiful green forest between them. Within few seconds I took out my camera to capture this scene about which I was speechless and didn’t knew what to say and that’s when I heard “Heaven on Earth!”
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