The pass of Bhor-Ghat is safely accomplished and we are in Khandala.
Our bungalow here is built on the very edge of a ravine, which
nature herself has carefully concealed under a cover of the most
luxuriant vegetation. Everything is in blossom, and, in this
unfathomed recess, a botanist might find sufficient material to
occupy him for a lifetime. Palms have disappeared; for the
most part they grow only near the sea. Here they are replaced by
bananas, mango trees, pipals (ficus religiosa), fig trees, and
thousands of other trees and shrubs, unknown to such outsiders as
ourselves. The Indian flora is too often slandered and misrepresented
as being full of beautiful, but scentless, flowers. At some seasons
this may be true enough, but, as long as jasmines, the various
balsams, white tuberoses, and golden champa (champaka or frangipani)
are in blossom, this statement is far from being true. The aroma
of champa alone is so powerful as to make one almost giddy. For
size, it is the king of flowering trees, and hundreds of them were
in full bloom, just at this time of year, on Mataran and Khandala.
We sat on the verandah, talking and enjoying the surrounding views,
until well-nigh midnight. Everything slept around us.
Khandala is nothing but a big village, situated on the flat top
of one of the mountains of the Sahiadra range, about 2,200 feet
above the sea level. It is surrounded by isolated peaks, as
strange in shape as any we have seen.
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