Acknowledgement:
I wish to express a sincere thanks to Mr.s Nayana Nargolkar for allowing us to pay a visit to Sipna farm. I am thankful to all the teachers who introduced and accompanied us to the place. Last but not the least, I am also grateful to all the sites on Internet for being an excellent source of information to enrich my knowledge on Sipna farm.
A trip to Sipna farm was organized
by SNDT college of Home Scince, Pune on Tuesday, 11th September 2018.
All the girls of FYBHSc paid a visit to this farm. We all were accompanied by
our Principal, Dr. Manik Dixit, Vice principal, Dr. Aparna Macche, our
N.S.S P.O, Dr. Smita Zambre, Mrs.
Lalieeta Bbhagat, our Environment science teacher Mrs. Ketki Danke and few of the other teachers.
We all gathered at the back gate of our
college at sharp 8 o’ clock. The girls according to their batches were
distributed into four buses and started from our college to Sipna farm.
22km away from Pune, there is a 21
acre man-made jungle by the name Sipna. Named after the river ‘Sipna’ in
Melghat, this private sanctuary is nested in Gorhe khurd and boasts of 200
species of insects, 26 butterflies, 14 snakes, 10 animals, 98 birds and over
22,000 trees which are collected from all over the country.
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Water holes for the birds and animals
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Started in the early 90’s, Mr.
Pramod Nargolkar who was an ardent nature lover built the entire jungle from
the scratch. Nobody can buy a forest. Hence, Mr. Nargolkar did the next thing- he
created one! He took special care to only choose only those saplings that
suited the unique climate and soil conditions of Pune. For Pramod Nargolkar, this was the only half
his dream. He wanted to add another 25 acres to this painstakingly created
forest.
Mrs. Nayana Nargolkar recounted that
there were two places that were really close to Mr. Pramod’s heart- Melghat
Tiger Reserve and The Andaman and Nicobar island and his love with the Nicobar
island turned out to be unfortunate. Mrs. Nayana Nargolkar recalled that fateful
day in 2004 when he had gone to the Nicobar island with five of his friends.
She reminisces, ‘ Pramod had taken special permission to stay on turtle island.
Though a rest house at a height of 80 feet on a rocky cliff was reserved for
them, they decided to stay in tent on the beach. In the dreaded tsunami that
struck, they all disappeared, except the guide who was found after 12 days.”
Pramod was never found, all his dreams shattered. It was then up to Nayana to take his dream
further and continue to look after his forest.
The unwritten rule at Sipna is not to take
anything away from here; be it a flower or a fruit. They are all for the
denizens of this sanctuary who are growing in numbers by the day. Whatever
remained unconsumed by the fauna would fall down and form the manure for the
trees. According to the caretaker, Mrs. Nargolkar would instruct would instruct
him to never harm any living being on the site. In fact, even snakes that were
caught in the nearby villages were always released inside. This really
fascinated us all.
Call in before you make the trip
and you will get a guided tour of the forest in which you will learn about the
rare species of the trees in the forest, bird watching and get some knowledge
about harvesting, composting and nature conservation.
It’s ideal for anyone who loves
being surrounded by nature. Explore the luscious green forest while you watch
the birds and get to learn a whole lot about nature and in case if you fall in
love with the place, they are looking for volunteers (botanists, managers,
birding, expert, etc) to help them keep the forest as beautiful as it is.
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| And the jungle trail begins! |
We reached the place at about 10am,
had our breakfast and had a small jungle trail along with one of the caretaker
Anand of the sanctuary. Although there
were more than 150 girls present over there at a time, he gave us a lot of
information about various trees and plants around. Some of them were Chandan, Ritha, Bel, Mahua, Saag, Pandhra pangara, Aapta, Bherli madh,
Samudrafal, Tamhan, Motha karmal, Kavath, Rudraksh, Bibba, Kadamb, Bakul,
Shivan, Bhokar, Arjun and many more.
After returning back, we had our
lunch; we played some outdoor games and returned back to the college by 4:30pm.
I must say, Mrs. Nayana taught us
how to preserve and be a part of nature. She is a true inspiration for all of
us. We are happy to see that there are people who are striving hard for the
conservation of the nature and would be happy to contribute in some or the
other manner in it.
Our visit to Sipna farm was truly
memorable and luckily, I got a chance to visit the place again on 2
nd
October, 2018.
This time, I went along with my
family who really were interested to see the man-made jungle, Sipna farm. This
time, there was no noise and crowd, this time we were all alone, all quiet and
calm. During our jungle trail, We got even more information about the trees, we
got to see many birds like treepie, minivet, fan tail, white eye, tailor bird,
pond heron, pied robin, etc. I think, the birds were probably very afraid of
such a large number of ‘college girls’ that they tried not to come in front of
us as far as possible! Maybe because of lot of noise…
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| Difference between Normal chicken and Kadaknath chicken |
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| Organic farming |
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A bettle deep in the jungles
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Mushrooms
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| An essence of beauty of nature |
When we returned back, we were sitting
in the place in front of the house when we observed a pair of Mayna building their nests in a small hole in
the bark of the coconut tree. They were
continuously moving here and there searching for the essential thing to build a
comfortable nest for them. How beautiful thing it was as we cannot see these
things in the cities full of pollution and even though there are any birds, we
do not have that much time to simply sit and observe them what they are doing.
How busy we are!
We had our lunch and then left for
Pune by 2 o’ clock in the afternoon. Sipna farm both the time gave me two
different experiences and lessons too. If given an opportunity, we will look
forward to visit the place again.
If you are really interested in
visiting the place, then you can visit their page on Facebook named ‘Sipna – a manmade
jungle’ or you can call on 9370670478 for more details.
Thank you!
