As a World Heritage enthusiast, it is a big shame to visit a site that is a World Heritage and does not know it is until a week later! In late October, my colleagues and I had a quick and short business meeting trip in Pune, India. The meetings were not good and end rather quickly. At first we planned to move to Mumbai, so that we could use a free day with a possibility to see two World Heritage sites in that city, but our Indian business partner did not want to pay Mumbai hotel price and persuade us to stay in Pune instead. One of their suggestions was to take us to see the flower valley which sounds quite interesting at least for my colleagues.

Next day morning, we were on a van out of Pune, the areas were still green even in the late monsoon season. We saw two lovely waterfalls, and many beautiful green mountains, the view was not a typical Indian at least in my opinion. The landscape with green grassland with cows reminded me of Sri Lanka! About two and a half hour we finally reached a flower valley, the view of area was lovely with many wide violet flowers full of the whole mountain. The location was not a valley at all but the flowers were located on the high plateau called Kaas. My colleagues told me that the view remind them Tuscany with much more untamed landscape, I could not agree more. After that we drove to see a dam and a lake, the area full of grassland and forest, a very pleasant place to visit.

After come back for a few days, my Indian business partner sent a mail with some photos of my trip and asked me how the Kaas Plateau and mentioned its World Heritage status! At first I was very confused as I never heard the name of Kaas Plateau on the Indian UNESCO list, then I suspected the Western Ghats since I pretty sure that the mountains between Mumbai and Pune was the famous Western Ghats, so I checked the serial sites list and found Kaas Plateau on one of them! So I really visited a World Heritage Site and not only one serial site but two serial sites actually as the lake, I saw, were located in Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary! I enjoyed a visit but felt very bad to call myself a World Heritage enthusiast.