Flowers and Mountain goats
The Ungulate conference at Munnar went really well. Got to meet some of worlds best wildlife biologists, scientists, photographers, filmmakers etc. Ofcourse, I also planned the trip to go see the Kurinji Flowers which are in bloom and the Nilgiri Thar and to do some ground work on another project.
But the weather was not on my side. It was wet wet wet and my new gear got fully drenched in the rain.. including my bag.. the big lens.. everything. To make matters worse, the place was infested with leeches. Till date, leeches got me many times on my foot and sometimes on my leg. This trip, they got onto my face, neck and lot of them even inside my shirt and pants. Anyway, in the 6 days I was there, I got less then few hours of shooting time, as I was either in the conference or the weather was not on my side.
The highlights of the trip:
The Neela Kurinji flowers which are in bloom in Eravikulam after 12 years. Their 12-year flowering cycle is still a very big mystery. One will have to wait till year 2018 to see these flowers again. The Nilgiri hills, which literally means the blue mountains, get its name from these purplish blue flowers which transforms the ghats into purple blue. They transform the green mountains into purple during the peak of their flowering. This year, the bees will come in huge numbers too and south india will see a record collection of Honey. All these plants will die out at the end of the year and will only come out after 12 years. |
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The Nilgiri Tahr (Nilgiritragus hylocrius) is native to the Nilgiri Hills and the southern portion of the Western Ghats and is found in no where else on earth. It’s highly endangered as their range is very restricted and their numbers are less than 2000. They are quite tame, in the sense, they are used to humans around them. You can almost go touch them at this place. However only a small group is used to human contact. The rest of the population is very shy and run away even if they see you half a kilometer away. This photographs is very special to me as in a single frame I have both the Rare Nilgiri Tahr and the Kurinji flowers. |
I uploaded some of the trip photographs onto my website.
Fabulous photos!