Come September, the Kaas plateau, Maharashtra’s very own ‘Valley of Flowers’ explodes into a riot of colours with countless wild flowers blooming on the plateau and along the hill slopes.
The plateau, 27km from Satara, has a unique topography. Nestled in the Sahyadri hills, the region with laterite soil is colourful only for a couple of months in late monsoon. Thereafter the land becomes completely barren. But when Kaas is in full bloom, Mother Nature is at her best. Amazingly, it wears a different colour every week with the variety of flowers in bloom changing week to week. The sunny yellow of Smithia and Sonki flowers, the purple Karvi blooms, the pink expanse of balsam — the magical carpet is a sight for sore eyes. The colourful spread is sometimes covered by a layer of mist and one has to carefully follow the trails to avoid trampling on the tiny flowers.
Kaas boasts of more than 300 varieties of wild flowers, herbs, orchids, shrubs and also some rare species of insectivorous flowers.
To preserve this natural treasure the forest department has now restricted the number of tourists to 2000 per day.
Kaas is one of the 39 sites in the Western Ghats that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2012.
