Childhood stories have more than often painted our imaginations with vivid descriptions and illustrations of fantasy lands to such an extent that all of us have fallen prey as children and willingly blurred our sense of reality. Even so, many years later, I was led to believe that it is not as outlandish a concept as it may have seemed, when I walked right into one such place – the Cloud Forest in Singapore!
Since Singapore keeps up to an upbeat dictum of presenting itself as a ‘City in a Garden’ to the rest of the world, it would not be wrong to say that the ‘Gardens by the Bay’, which bags a long list of accolades every year, is an iconic landmark equal in ranks to that of the ‘Merlion’ which has been the beacon of this south-east Asian city for decades now.
Upon reaching the Marina Bay park area adjoining the Marina reservoir, a pretty promenade brought me in front of two curved glasshouse conservatories – one of the Flower Dome & the other of the Cloud Forest!!
As soon as I entered the Cloud Forest dome, I was gobsmacked by a swirl of super cool air-conditioning around me – I could now let my guard down, for it was in total contrast to the torrid heat wave outside from which I literally had to defend myself from melting down for so long!
The first thing I felt was a pleasant shower of drizzles over me; just as I was entrapped into believing that it might even rain inside, I was baffled to see that it was in sooth droplets of water spurting out from an indoor waterfall streaming down like silver-beaded threads of satin, from a 35m high ‘hanging garden’ or something that looked like an exclusive mountain cloaked in epiphytic vegetation – a typical ‘rainforest-like’ setting that characteristically defines tropical regions.
While sauntering around the ‘mountain’, I couldn’t help but notice the punctilious efforts taken to grow an overflowing variety of plants to create the perception of a ‘nature trail’; which eventually took me inside the hollow ben into an elevator that directly transported me to the top-most level! I must admit that my eyes were on stalks as I was smitten by the spectacle from this elevation in the dome!
From here on, a walk-able labyrinthine track that coils, kinks and loops, in and about the ‘mount’ like a ‘wonder maze’ ensures that sightseers enjoy aerial views as well as pass through all the animated levels which are each thematically beautified with different kinds of ‘plantage’ - an endless, dramatic assortment of tassel ferns, mosses, orchids, anthuriums, pitcher-plants, venus flytraps, bromiliads, pines, lilies & sunflowers - until they finally reach the foothill!
We begin with the ‘Lost World’ at the topmost, where there is a ‘pond’ with refreshing foliage that in reality is usually found only in places that are 2000 meters above sea level! Then, we move onto the ‘Waterfall View’ and afterwards the ‘Cloud Walk’ on overhanging path-lanes that literally feels like walking over the clouds especially when the ‘misters’ regularly envelop the man-made montane in cool curtains of moisture.
Subsequently, we are ushered towards the ‘Treetop Walk’ that goes through tree canopies closely, and then we descend into the ‘Secret Garden’ at the bottom-most level, which is like a dense forest with some of the rarest species of flora.
The evenings tend to be far more appealing when the entire dome is gorgeously lit up; and the Gardens by the Bay as a whole including the ‘Supertree Grove’, arrests our consciousness with it’s over the top graphic presentation, that we inevitably slip into one of the scenes from fiction tales that we have fancied as kids!
‘The Cloud Forest’ is the conspicuous blueprint of the Singaporean catch-phrase of “edutainment”, thereby fulfilling the combinative experience of spinning the educative and entertainment purposes into one. I will surely look forward to another lucky chance which will take me inside here again!