Another face of Goa

Think Goa and images of sunny sandy beaches full of tourists coupled with jazzy bars along with a good doze of liquor especially its heady Feni - coconut or cashew nut come to mind. The little known face and fortunately the lesser traversed side of Goa is its beautiful dense forests which form part of the Western Ghats with its unique bio-diversity. Goa occupies a little over 3100 sq kms of land area in India of which over 700 sq. kms consists  of dense mixed deciduous forests. At any time of the year, the area is a real paradise for nature lovers.

So here I am having signed up for the BNHS monsoon camp to join 21 other nature lovers plus our very knowledgeable resource persons, Isaac, Nikhil, Nirmal, Shushma  to experience the unique beauty of this place. The annual south-west monsoon is making its withdrawal (or so we thought) from the sub-continent. The monsoons have been abundant in this and may areas of the country this year translating into a vibrant and lively forest full of insects, butterflies, snakes, amphibians and of course the wildflowers. Our visit covers the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary where our Wildernest resort is located, Bhagvan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and Bondla wildlife Sanctuary.


This blog is different from my earlier blogs in two respects:
Firstly, you see a slightly different form with pages added to the home page which you are currently reading. Various species as butterflies, moths etc. are on different pages as listed at the Bottom  of this page. To view any of these pages, please scroll down to the end and click on the page name as shown.

The second difference you will see is that unlike my earlier blogs which had photographs of birds and mammals, this time their sighting was limited due to the thick foliage around. However this was more than made up by other gems of the forest- butterflies, moths, insects & various creepie crawlies. So this was a very unique experience for me which I would like to share with you.
The map of Goa with its green area is shown below

Hope you enjoy this cyber-travel & do remember to send me your comments - good or bad. If you enjoyed this blog and are bitten by the travel bug, you may also like to visit my earlier travel blogs, a list of which can be seen on the right column of this page. Just click the place to go there - but not before you have seen the pages of this blog!
Happy viewing!!!