These are the details: "Hello everybody, This is Kedar Champhekar from Pune. I know many of you were waiting for updates on this topic, and I sincerely apologize for keeping you waiting this long. The first ever meet for WildFlowerIndia is happening at Kaas Plateau, near the town of Satara, about a 150 km from Pune. To tell a little about the Kaas Plateau for those who are not from Western Maharashtra; is is a very large, high altitude, laterite plateau, one of the largest of the many strewn across the Northern Western Ghats. Due to the hard laterite base and the lack of enough soil very few large plants grow on the plateau and hence the vegetation is dominated by stretches of grasses and small herbs. In the monsoon many ephemeral herbs grow on the plateau and bloom by the thousands presenting a spectacular sight. A lot of these plants are specialized to grow on the mineral rich, hard laterite and thus are endemic to such habitats. Increasing tourist pressure, irresponsible tourists and mining for Bauxite are some of the threats these plateaus are facing all over the Ghats. So let us study the natural beauty here before it disappears and let us get inspired to protect it. Dates: 2nd or 3rd week of September. The final dates will be decided in a short while. Maximum flowers bloom when the rains start receding. Accomodation: Accomodation can be made at Satara comfortably for 25 people. If the response is greater then we can look for alternative accomodation in Satara or the option of staying in Pune and travelling to Satara. Transport: Pune is very well connected by rail to many parts of the country. >From Pune there are non-stop state transport buses at every half an hour to Satara at a nominal ticket of around 100 rupees. From Satara private transport will have to be arranged as the state transport bus frequency to Kaas is low and also the plateau is a very vast expanse so it will take a lot of time to walk from one end to the other. The rate of the private transport will be decided by the number of people as buses of different sizes vary in their rates. More places to see: Mahabaleshwar is a place which we can visit from Satara. It is a hill station at around 1500 m from the sea level and characterised by thick evergreen forests. The ghat road going down from Mahabaleshwar to Konkan is very picteresque and this may be an opportunity for those people who haven't seen evergreen forests much. The final dates can be arrived at maximum by second week of July looking at the availability of members. So book your dates people! And start pestering your bosses for a leave!! :) The rough costing will be put up by the weekend along with some trains reaching pune from various places and a map showing the locations of Kaas and photographs giving a glimplse of the riot of colours! :) I expect more members to come from outside western maharashtra and maharashtra, then the trip will be more successful in introducing a new habitat and flora to people from all over India. WARNING: The flora at Kaas is short lived and needless to say that rains are unpredictable. If it is raining too much or more likely to happen, if it stops raining early then a lot of the herbs may be drying out. But this is a gamble as we cannot play with the dates at the last moment, so please take a note of this. So those who are interested should start replying to this email with their availabilities and difficulties and I will start making a document with the names of the participants.
Thank you very much, Kedar Champhekar" ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vijay Barve <vijay.ba...@gmail.com> Date: 1 July 2010 08:40 Subject: WildFlowerIndia and IndianTreePix Meet 2010 : Expression of Interest To: wildflowerindia <wildflowerin...@yahoogroups.com>, Indiantrees < indiantreepix@googlegroups.com> Cc: wfim2...@diversityindia.org Dear Friends, Thank you very much for your interest in the Meet 2010. To get the numbers clear for planning of the meet, please enter your name in the database with city and email id. Please visit http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/WildFlowerIndia/database?method=addRecord&tbl=2and enter the details. See you at Kass Meet. Regards, Vijay Barve http://DiversityIndia.org/ <http://diversityindia.org/> -- With regards, J.M.Garg (jmga...@gmail.com) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmgarg1 'Creating awareness of Indian Flora & Fauna' Image Resource of more than a thousand species of Birds, Butterflies, Plants etc. (arranged alphabetically & place-wise): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:J.M.Garg For learning about Indian Flora, visit/ join Google e-group- Efloraofindia: http://groups.google.co.in/group/indiantreepix -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "efloraofindia" group. To post to this group, send email to indiantree...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to indiantreepix+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/indiantreepix?hl=en.
