Verdant Tea Gardens a treat to the eyes

A lone pachyderm stood swaying his tusk and grazing around. I stopped the car and gazed at him. I remembered someone telling me an elephant who roamed all alone was considered dangerous. I wondered if this one would go rampant but soon spotted company behind the tall bushes. They looked great as a group. I was passing through the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary from Bandipur to the land of tea, coffee, rubber and spices called Wayanad in Kerala.

Sunrise at Devbagh

Devbagh is a sleepy town at the farthest end of the Konkan belt in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra. It took us a good ten hours drive from Pune via Kolhapur to reach this town which also included breaks in between for lunch and breakfast. As like all villages in Konkan it is abundant in cashew and coconut trees, mangroves and the ubiquitous fish. En route to Devbagh the air was filled with the aroma of the mango blooms that were in abundance. It was the flowering season of the mangoes.