Fireflies / Light bugs of Bhorgiri, Bhimashankar

A couple of weekends back we had scheduled our night to see millions of fireflies / light bugs that generate in the forest of Bhimashankar every year. It is said that they multiply themselves from thousands to millions just in the initial few days of monsoon. As monsoon had arrived in Bhimashankar on the 3rd of June this year, we went there on the 8th of June. Very few people like their Saturday night to be like this one, but from our point of view, seeing the forest blinking in the night naturally is way more awesome than any other way to spend the weekend with.



We reached Bhorgiri [a small sleepy little village on the border of Bhimashankar] at 7 PM. As it was not pitch dark yet, we decided to have some food. Surprisingly, the villagers were extremely poor — no vegetables at home, no electricity, no satellite TV, etc. One of the huts was slightly illuminated with faces having question mark seeing us with big cameras, lenses, etc. When asked for food, they offered us to have dinner with them. It was a very simple food [and extremely spicy], but our purpose was served. We thanked them, and paid some money.



Our step inside the forest to witness the much awaited scene of millions of fireflies lighting up the entire forest started with a surprise — some fireflies landed on us and on our car. That gave us an opportunity to observe them closely lighting up and dimming down. It was, in true meaning, mesmerizing! And who knew this was nothing in comparison to what we were going to see further!



It was pitch black, and the whole forest was blinking with the switching biological lights of the fireflies in uncountable number. My mind said, "this is the moment of the trip, literally". We were so lost looking at the great phenomenon that we did not realize the time were there until we finally felt that we 2 were all alone in the forest. We decided to paint the last few million pixels by a few million fireflies before driving home back.