Tuesday, January 27, 2015

not long before

bamboo pit viper
bamboo pit viper
    Not long before my exams were over,I was searching for ways to end up in a jungle. And an excuse to do that came on dec 6,and this time i was in matheran with a group.
    It took a whole lot of coincidence and immense luck to spot this bamboo pit viper curled up in the thicket. A venomous snake from the viper family. Its nocturnal and slow moving and not so aggressive .
black prince

The next month Om and I are in agumbe with my parents in karnataka(55 kms from udupi). A rain forest which receives rainfall of more than 7000mm. Its known for its reptile population, and famed for the healthy number of king cobras here. Even though we werent greeted by the sight of the king ,there was enough or more than that maybe to give us an experience of a whole new dimension of an undisturbed rain forest.  You see tall and huge trees,some of them with buttresed trunks, their
branches covered in moss. The path ahead snakes though them. Even in this dry season the forest is quite wet ,really wet. (below lesser gull.)

leith's frog

   Balancing myself on the moss covered rocks and stumbling my way ahead we hear my dad call out. And there holed up in a rock crevice just above the stream this checkered keelback feeds off on a fish.
checkered keelback with its kill
 Agumbe is an extraordinary place for almost everything. Its vegetation and the healthiness of it is why one has to stay for a very long time there for the place to unfold more beautifully. The forest just like any, does not let you down.