maharashtra

M2 slept in late. M1 sat in a boat and looked fashionable while studying. Sephi cooked. The kids played games. I chased birds.

Everyone did their thing on a beautiful Sunday morning.

@sephibergerson 's lovely family invited us over and fed us yummy fresh cooked #food.

I finally found people in India who have more camping gear than me. My tribe 😁

Over the weekend we went #camping in #Maharashtra, by the #Terekhol river.

I wish I'd taken a nicer picture of the beautiful river and the fresh, cool water.

When the kids had Kinder Joy after eight years

More Sahayadri goodness

Another pic of the #temple eaten up by the #jungle, 'coz y'all apparently like this sort of thing

The jungle reclaims a temple in a relocated village.

And the not-so-rolling rock, has gathered moss and some more

The road less traveled... has grown a mohawk

Our forest guide told us that the forest is walking into what were earlier farms. It is slowly reclaiming land at its edges. The forest department is not planting trees.

Meeting spot

Once manus leave...

Jungle

Always a sucker for electrical engineering

#windmill #windmills #sugarcane #maharashtra #sahayadri #caravan

Met up with Pepe the Don after an eternity. Some people truly never change. It's amazing. The same cheerful voice and bright smile.

And then, across hills, fields, villages, palm trees and beaches, we could see the sea.

Which one do you like?

Savitri river

The happiest café owner ever. She was delighted to have the opportunity to feed all the children, and did remarkably well.

This is too beautiful for me to be able to caption.

Water lilies

Contemplating on the #pond

What a beautiful campus

#flowers #sculpture

The picture is hastily taken. But if you zoom in, you'll see the artist has depicted the balance between industrialisation and conservation very beautifully.

The view

Unlike my children, S1 likes being photographed, and likes photographing me.

#berries. Good to look at, but very bitter.

Masti time

Me: This is a pod. All the ingredients of life are within this pod. Everything life needs to sprout again. A tree packages this pod and gives it to you. You can take it anywhere you like and bury it into the ground; life will sprout again. Isn't that magical.

M2: Meh

Deeper and deeper into the #forest we went. Farther and farther

Another #mossy #tree

This is a complete #plant in six inches. Leaf, stem, #flower.

Life has tremendous #zeal to exist. It will sprout anywhere. And then reproduce in the blink of an eye.

And yet we are going through an unforeseen extinction. Imagine the tremendous force and violence that humanity is exerting on nature, in order for it to receed, and for us to prevail.

#nofilter #nocaption #flower #clusterflower

Then we trooped into a #forest

Boom

Because you people like #mushrooms so much. This one is big, fat and fixed on the ground.

We found a familiar friend

Shrooms!

Om nom nom

How now
Brown pao

It just doesn't stop coming down.

We are hardly complaining 😁

Not a huge fan of civilization, but sometimes markets can be nice and quaint. We'd all just bought ourselves raincoats and were ready to brave the #rain in style. Except M2, who didn't like any of the choices available in his size. Being the smallest can be annoying.

If you look carefully dead center, you will see a tree partially obscured by fog, clouds and rain. I'm posting nofilter because all filters were making the tree vanish. What I really need is a filter to convert this pic into a watercolour painting 🎨

S1: मेरी खाते हुए picture लोगे तो I'll act crazy.

When you're stuck in the rain, even #Maggi looks sumptuous

S2 in a cute umbrella hat.

M2

Hard to take good photographs when it's pouring as much as it is. The #ghats in the #rain are something else.

When it #rains as much as it does at #mahabaleshwar, when the #trees grow #moss

#strawberries #cream #icecream and everything #nice

And then the #rain came down