The Inspiration
After seeing a thousand reels on Navi Mumbai Flamingos, it was just a matter of time before it became irresistible, and I had to visit it. I told my friends about it, and they agreed to travel to Mumbai with me.
Getting there
We take the Shivneri to Navi Mumbai, which takes us through the newly built state-of-the-art "The Missing Link", what an incredible piece of engineering marvel that thing is! We get down at Belapur, get our rented car, and the hunt begins!
First Encounter
We first come to a lake which is marked as the flamingo point, no trace of Flamingos, but everywhere we go, we start noticing the billboards, info boards about flamingos. I had no idea that these flamingos have been visiting us annually since the 1990s!
The sea of Flamingos
We move on to the next spot, we navigate using Gmaps, and like sometimes Gmaps does it, we were standing at the gate of a private society, but on the maps, I was able to see a wetland kind of area, so we went around that society, and voila, we hit JACKPOT! A sea of flamingos was fluttering around in the water. We saw them from a distance. The hour was 12, and the sun was harsh. We clicked some photos and decided we would come in the evening after visiting the "Siddhi Vinayak" temple.
The unexpected
We go, we come back around 4-4:30. All gone! Only 4-5 pink flamingos were left, with some 15-20 white ones that had flown away.. I was devastated. The walk to the area where the remaining Flamingos were felt like years. I was hoping with every step they would come back, but they won't.
The learning
There was a lone pink flamingo; 10-12 photographers were shooting. I was observing the flamingo and started smiling
The lone flamingo
I did not get to click a sea of Flamingos, but I got to see that 1 flamingo, which saw a sea of cameras :)