Turtle festival – what all things came to your mind?
Confusion, Curiosity, excitement + + + AND a BIG ?
I too had same feeling listening when i heard of this 'Turtle festival' for the first time. What will be it like? This was the first thing that came to my mind. Sound interesting, something different, BUT WHAT? I was totally unaware. You to wanna explore.... Come with me and I will take you to a very beautiful village in Konkan - Velas.
Velas - I can think of one Marathi word to decsribe Velas "Tumdaar gaav". I cant think or relate to any other word to describe this beautiful, green and heavenly place in konkan. A small village, with cow-dung houses, Lots of coconut trees, lots of mangos everywhere. So green - so pure!
Our journey started on Saturday 25th April 09 .
Mumbai - Velas bus frm mumbai central at 12.30pm. We reached velas at .30pm after a hectic bus jopurney. We were immediately guided to the 'Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra' office. After catching up with the last part of the film [which was again shown to us the next day] we were too exhausted to explore village. Neatherless to say - we dozed off immediately after dinner.
Sunday 26-April-09.
Our day started very early at 5.30am in the morning. It was just to be first in bathroom's queue. We were in all arnd 15 people staying in one house, VERY confortably. You can thus imagine the size of the house. MUCH - MUCH bigger than our flats in mumbai. Soon after breakfast we left for Turtle Festival.
Bala kaka - as he is called, gave us few information of turtles. Like -
a) When female water turtles are ready to hatch eggs, they comes out of water. She then search for nice place to lay eggs and then with the help of her wings she dig a hole enough for her eggs to hatch. If at this point she sense any danger she immediately stop her acts and again enters into the sea in search for new destination.
b) Female when gets matured [after 7yrs], she mates with the male turtle inside the sea and then comes to 'The Same Sea Shore' where she was born to lay her own eggs.
c) After laying eggs [which can take arnd 1hr] she close the hole with sand and make the sand firm with her help of her weight of leatherbag. This is called as 'Turtle Dance'.
c) After female tortoise lay eggs, she returns to the sea. She never even once return to see her own babies.
d) Male water tortoise once into the sea on his first day of the birth, never ever comes out of the sea in his entire life span.
e) It takes around 54 months for hatching.
f) Babies comes out of the eggs and then it takes them 4-5 days more to come on land, pushing all the sand, which consumes lots of energy.
g) Before going into the sea its important for tortoise to walk on the sand, so that they can thus develop a magenetic energy / image in their brain, so that when they will mature themself to lay eggs, they will come on the same sea shore.
f) One female lay arnd 100+ eggs at one go. She 'can' hatch three times in her life. Out of 100 the survival rate is just 1 to 2%. We really need to protect this water tortoise species.
h) Average age of turtles is 100 yrs to even 400 yrs and they can weight in 300 to 500kg.
In India and in many countries lots of tortoised are killed for worng reasons. Eating beeing one and for smuglling. Many people belive that if you have tortoise at home, it brings fortune. Even in Velas many people used to dig up the nest in which tortoise lay her eggs and sell those eggs.
It was with the efforts of Bala Uphayade that awareness was spread in Velas. Today with the help of local people he has managed to protect the nest of tortoise by placing those eggs in the safety purpose built fence. Once the babies are out, they are released free inside the huge sea. This moment is really pinching. A small baby of hardly 4 days old is all set to face the challenges in the sea, big weaves, huge fish everything. Poor babies.
At around 7.15am we had this two babies all set to face the world inside the sea all by themself. It was an amazing moment. A moment of happiness, moment of freedom, moment of sadness, moment of departure. We all waved those two female tortoise good bye only to see them again on the same beach after 7yrs.
For more Photos visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/sharvani.khare/TurtleTortoiseFestival26April09#
Confusion, Curiosity, excitement + + + AND a BIG ?
I too had same feeling listening when i heard of this 'Turtle festival' for the first time. What will be it like? This was the first thing that came to my mind. Sound interesting, something different, BUT WHAT? I was totally unaware. You to wanna explore.... Come with me and I will take you to a very beautiful village in Konkan - Velas.
Velas - I can think of one Marathi word to decsribe Velas "Tumdaar gaav". I cant think or relate to any other word to describe this beautiful, green and heavenly place in konkan. A small village, with cow-dung houses, Lots of coconut trees, lots of mangos everywhere. So green - so pure!
Our journey started on Saturday 25th April 09 .
Mumbai - Velas bus frm mumbai central at 12.30pm. We reached velas at .30pm after a hectic bus jopurney. We were immediately guided to the 'Sahyadri Nisarga Mitra' office. After catching up with the last part of the film [which was again shown to us the next day] we were too exhausted to explore village. Neatherless to say - we dozed off immediately after dinner.
Sunday 26-April-09.
Our day started very early at 5.30am in the morning. It was just to be first in bathroom's queue. We were in all arnd 15 people staying in one house, VERY confortably. You can thus imagine the size of the house. MUCH - MUCH bigger than our flats in mumbai. Soon after breakfast we left for Turtle Festival.
Bala kaka - as he is called, gave us few information of turtles. Like -
a) When female water turtles are ready to hatch eggs, they comes out of water. She then search for nice place to lay eggs and then with the help of her wings she dig a hole enough for her eggs to hatch. If at this point she sense any danger she immediately stop her acts and again enters into the sea in search for new destination.
b) Female when gets matured [after 7yrs], she mates with the male turtle inside the sea and then comes to 'The Same Sea Shore' where she was born to lay her own eggs.
c) After laying eggs [which can take arnd 1hr] she close the hole with sand and make the sand firm with her help of her weight of leatherbag. This is called as 'Turtle Dance'.
c) After female tortoise lay eggs, she returns to the sea. She never even once return to see her own babies.
d) Male water tortoise once into the sea on his first day of the birth, never ever comes out of the sea in his entire life span.
e) It takes around 54 months for hatching.
f) Babies comes out of the eggs and then it takes them 4-5 days more to come on land, pushing all the sand, which consumes lots of energy.
g) Before going into the sea its important for tortoise to walk on the sand, so that they can thus develop a magenetic energy / image in their brain, so that when they will mature themself to lay eggs, they will come on the same sea shore.
f) One female lay arnd 100+ eggs at one go. She 'can' hatch three times in her life. Out of 100 the survival rate is just 1 to 2%. We really need to protect this water tortoise species.
h) Average age of turtles is 100 yrs to even 400 yrs and they can weight in 300 to 500kg.
In India and in many countries lots of tortoised are killed for worng reasons. Eating beeing one and for smuglling. Many people belive that if you have tortoise at home, it brings fortune. Even in Velas many people used to dig up the nest in which tortoise lay her eggs and sell those eggs.
It was with the efforts of Bala Uphayade that awareness was spread in Velas. Today with the help of local people he has managed to protect the nest of tortoise by placing those eggs in the safety purpose built fence. Once the babies are out, they are released free inside the huge sea. This moment is really pinching. A small baby of hardly 4 days old is all set to face the challenges in the sea, big weaves, huge fish everything. Poor babies.
At around 7.15am we had this two babies all set to face the world inside the sea all by themself. It was an amazing moment. A moment of happiness, moment of freedom, moment of sadness, moment of departure. We all waved those two female tortoise good bye only to see them again on the same beach after 7yrs.
For more Photos visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/sharvani.khare/TurtleTortoiseFestival26April09#
