A Sunday Morning in south Mumbai!
It was just another nature trail day for me. We had organised a trail to Horniman Circle, Fort in Mumbai which was supposed to be a tree walk. I went there along with my sister Rupali (who actually surprised me on Saturday evening by saying that she would be joining for Sunday’s trail). We reached there at about 7.45am. Few members of our organization (WWF-India) who were supposed to join for the trail, didn’t turn–up. Only five of us – I, my sister, Ranjit, Vishal & Dr. Nanabhai were present for the trail. As we all knew each other from past many years, the trail turned-up to be a friendly get-together.
The icing on the cake was the vintage car rally… all the vintage cars were parked just outside the circle. After spending some time on ‘clicking’ these old beauties, we began to enter the garden (the horniman circle). But, watchman stopped us at the gate saying that the garden will open at 10 O’clock. This gave us some more time for admiring those vintage cars. It was only 8.45 and we finished admiring almost all the cars. So, we decided to go to the BPT Gardens. All of us had been to BPT garden several times before except, Ranjit. So, we planned to explore the Colaba Woods (another garden in Colaba). Since none of us knew exactly where this place is, it took us about an hour to search this place. We actually reached to TIFR (one end of Mumbai) in search of this place! After going through the length and breadth of the Colaba which also includes defense area, one of my friend suddenly remembered that he has a notepad & also has internet connectivity to it. Then, finally we managed to find this garden.
The garden is very near to WTC. Each one of us had been to WTC before for some or the other work but, nobody knew that this place is very near to it. Anyway, finally we were in ‘Colaba Woods’. We reached there at almost quarter to ten and read a sign board - this garden is open to visitors from 5.30am to 10.30am! We decided not to waste time and started looking for plants and lesser fauna of that garden. Actually everyone was a bit disappointed by looking at the size of this garden. It is a small garden maintained by the ‘Tatas’, with a regular jogging track. But, it holds pretty old trees and variety of plants that includes yellow silk cotton tree, Wild almond, some ficus spp., pink tabebua, cannon ball tree and many more. We also saw a flowerpecker. In-short, we came out satisfied with the garden. After this entire extensive search, it was quite obvious that we all were hungry. Here came another search! This time, it was for food. Everyone (except me) had their favorite food joints and one by one, visited them all! Thanks to all of them, my Sunday morning ended in a wonderful way!!
