Every time I passed by the
Airoli bridge I always lookout for the white spots in creek spread over acres
separating you from the tall scrapers of Mumbai seen from the distance. Every
single time I made myself a promise to get out of the car or stop the bike and
wait and have a look. But could not do it.
I wonder why?
The child in you wants to do it but the adult
wants to rush to office or is in some hurry or perhaps considers it stupid or
crazy. But Tell you what being a little crazy can lead to awesome......
This is exactly what
happened to me back in month of May 2015. Thanks to my school friend who
happened to confirm an 11th hour program to wake up on a Sunday morning
and set ourselves to watch birds....birds of some special class.....precisely
flamingos........!!!
Often it’s good not to
know much about places or the wild life and just keep exploring the unknown and
follow your instincts. Your mind gets cluttered with some innocently curios questions,
where can we spot them can we get up close or can we really spot them???
From my past travel
experience I knew All these questions get answered and gradually so.....you
just need the trust and belief......
An hour’s drive in the
clear and shining sky and we reached the bridge. As we walked along the bridge
we could see those white spots in the dark mushy land around the creek.
Thanks to the 50x zoom of
the camera we could see them munching breakfast in the early morning.....
About an hour or so as the
sun started rising above us...we could watch a few number of those birds.There was a range of
others birds too and we were lucky to get a few shots of those in addition to
the lovely tweets.....
And a lonely boatman and another one floating on a tyre
By now We were drenched and having had a fair look of the bird although from a distance , were on the verge of returning back home.
But right at that moment
something happened and we changed our minds to move to Vashi to see the
beautiful Municipal corporation building with the tall flag shining high filled
our chest with pride.
And then we took our path
back home and moments later on our left somewhere near seawoods we saw a larger
field with what appeared as some birds.... just for curiosity we stopped the
bike and made the walk for about 30 meters ....and then what found our sight
was Unbelievable to say the least....
EUREKA...........
This was a Eureka moment
......we were searching for this for the last 3 hrs...all the questions answered....
Right in front of us was
the flock of a thousands of flamingos spread across around half a kilometer long belt assembled. As we moved
closer we could hear the sounds in a range as if the gathering was an exchange
of some thoughts ......a few posed for our shots....
As we glimpsed through the
50x closely we found a hurdle at the centre where the most noisy and active
group moved around consisting of some 30 odd birds....
Some flew above some
opened there wings to show the beautiful pink tinge on their feathers....
This was all worth it
...never dreamed of such a sighting.....it filed our hearts with a lot of joy as
we had not set out with such high hopes...
But as I had always
experienced if you have the belief the wild will pull into such moments ....you
just need the patience and wait for nature to bestow its favors......and that
precisely what happened on that Sunday.......
