“Seasons come and goBut I will never changeAnd I’m on my way.” When thinking of my latest weekend getaway destination, the Kaas Plateau — aka Valley of Flowers — the words of this Tinie Tempah song come to mind. After having been repeatedly reminded for the entire year that flowers are in full bloom only during September at Kaas Plateau, a lesser known gem of Maharashtra, I was looking forward to seeing iridescent beds of blooms across the length and breadth of the plateau. But what I actually got, was a vast green expanse with tiny red dots peppered all over it, as if it was suffering from chicken pox.
Much to my dismay, Kaas Plateau looked as calm as a dormant sea. Instead of a hectic bloom, it went about with its life with a sense of indifference that I wished I had shown towards all the travelogues that painted a rather colourful picture of that place. I do not know if it was the rains or our bad luck that the biodiversity hotspot chose not to show us its best colours. What it did offer was an air of comforting silence that was in stark contrast to the inner turbulence that my friends and I felt at that time. We were appalled by the distance of 74 km that we had covered, only to be let down by a bunch of flowers, or the lack thereof.
But in hindsight, I realise that every time Kaas let us down, it offered us something exciting in return that we conveniently overlooked. After my squinted eyes could not spot a bed of flowers to the optimal capacity, I asked a local lady, squatting on a muddy patch, the whereabouts of the flowers. She responded in Marathi that there are a lot of flowers at both ends of the plateau. As I thanked her and began to eenie-meenie-minie-mo between both the sides, she offered a plate of homemade food that I could purchase. My friends and I also squatted on the ground and relished nachani roti and Maharashtrian pitla, accompanied by a glass of buttermilk.
A little while later, much to the delight of our dejected selves, we spotted a minor patch that somewhat looked like what we had seen in those misleading pictures. We immediately gheraoed the flowers and posed for a picture before anything else could go wrong. In the process, an excited friend stepped on a flower. One of the gardeners, a young woman in Maharashtrian attire, rushed towards us, hurling abuses in Marathi. After we assured her that we would not trample another flower, she informed us that there were thicker spreads a few hundred meters away. As we walked past breathtaking views of the valley and lush green carpets, with our eyes frantically searching for any colour besides the annoyingly abundant green, we did spot an entire palette. But those, just like the peppered red dots, were freckles of a myriad range of colours on the face of this naughty boy named Kaas, who just would not let us get away with what we came for. [caption id=“attachment_4074603” align=“alignnone” width=“824”]
Expectation vs Reality[/caption] Eventually, we resigned ourselves to our fates and tried to console each other with the ritual of whining. A kindly gentleman, who was visiting Kaas with his family, overheard us. “We came so far… for this?” “So what?,” he interjected. As we began to narrate our woes to him, he patiently lent us a sympathetic ear, only to sum up with, “But you got so much fresh oxygen to inhale. Isn’t that enough?” And that is when it started seeping in. The buds that I had been stepping on so conveniently in the course of my desperate lookout for flowers would go on to bloom into flowers for say, yet another group of hopeful visitors from an even farther land (say, Gujarat). How fair is it for us to trample on their hopes? Moreover, how ungrateful it is for us to complain about not having it all, when we already have so much at our disposal.
On our ride back to Mumbai, we randomly discussed the importance of breathing. How breath is what we take the most for granted every second of our lives. How familiarising yourself with your breath could do wonders, especially in trying times when you know that you have a companion by your side who will not leave until the life itself leaves your body. Consequently, the windows were rolled down and deep breaths were taken to make the most of the air that we had just whooshed by in the past few hours. It is difficult to say for sure whether that extra intake of oxygen helped. But it will definitely act as a reserve for the times Nature tries us, like it did at Kaas Plateau. Who would say that a wide open green expanse could be as suffocating as a pitch dark room? I must say our experience was quite close to that. But as of now, I fondly look back at the nachani roti and pitla we hogged while squatting on the muddy patch. And the only regret I have is that I could have drawn in a few more gulps of fresh air while I was in the Valley of (no) Flowers.
 "Kaas Plateau: In the Valley of Flowers, finding few blooms — but plenty of fresh air")
Expectation vs Reality[/caption] Eventually, we resigned ourselves to our fates and tried to console each other with the ritual of whining. A kindly gentleman, who was visiting Kaas with his family, overheard us. “We came so far… for this?” “So what?,” he interjected. As we began to narrate our woes to him, he patiently lent us a sympathetic ear, only to sum up with, “But you got so much fresh oxygen to inhale. Isn’t that enough?” And that is when it started seeping in. The buds that I had been stepping on so conveniently in the course of my desperate lookout for flowers would go on to bloom into flowers for say, yet another group of hopeful visitors from an even farther land (say, Gujarat). How fair is it for us to trample on their hopes? Moreover, how ungrateful it is for us to complain about not having it all, when we already have so much at our disposal.
