On a previous trip visiting family in India, my brother-in-law invited me to go to a place where he liked to hike and camp. It was a jungle just a little outside the city of Bangalore. It was actually quite odd to go to such a remote place while being so close to such a crowded city. It really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. I guess the fact that it took us nearly two hours to get there helped with that perception but in reality we were only 30-40 km outside of the city center. That’s what happens when a once smallish city grows like crazy though. You end up with urban and rural right next to each other.
Before we got there, he told me there was a small chance that we could come across some wild elephants in this jungle. I have to say I had very mixed feelings about that. I really wanted to see them but I knew that if we did, it would be a very dangerous situation. So as we walked along the trails we would sometimes hear a loud crunching in the trees. We would immediately stand stock still and look as closely as we could. Luckily, or unluckily I’m still not sure which, we didn’t see any.
It was pretty cool because I got to see a bunch of insects and plants I hadn’t seen before. One of them is this flower here which I came across. I thought it was really cool but I wasn’t sure what it was, I just knew that I needed to capture it. I initially thought it was a tree flower because it was roughly at eye level and seemed to be coming from a tree and they were all over the place. When I took this, I caught the stem in the shot but I thought it would look better as if it was floating against the smooth green background so I removed it.
Upon further investigation, I determined that this was actually a climbing lily (Gloriosa Superba). I also found out that it is the state flower of Tamil Nadu, which it turns out was just over the ridge I was climbing.
However it got there, I’m happy it did because it is one beautiful flower.
About Dov Plawsky
I am an aspiring freelance photographer and writer. I've always enjoyed the story around the picture and now want to expand upon that. I founded Beyond Your Bag to help share knowledge across like minded people and to hopefully connect those people to one another.
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