Photo Feature: The Plitvice Lakes in Croatia

All photos by Sheila Kumar and subject to copyright.

A short note on the green and white wonderland that is the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia.

Stupid fights for land, was our driver/guide`s take on the bitter fighting at the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, and his words ring true when I read the backstory of this tourist magnet.

The waters flowing over the limestone and chalk have, over thousands of years, deposited travertine barriers, creating natural dams which in turn have created a series of beautiful lakes, caves and waterfalls. The forests in the park are home to bears, wolves and many rare bird species.

The stunning beauty of the sixteen cascading lakes all separated by travertine dams, in the National Park, covering almost 30,000 hectares and officially declared a national park in 1949, is overwhelming, but the Plitvice Lakes area has not always been the tranquil region it is now.

Occupied by Ottomans and Habsburgs in rapid succession, Plitvice became a military frontier controlled by Serbian border guards from the 1500s onwards. Many decisive battles were fought close to the lakes, for many years, marking the area with blood. In the earliy 1990s, Croats were ethnically cleansed from the area, then retook it after a battle in 1998.

Today it is a major tourist attraction, drawing 1,000,000 visitors per year . Muse on that irony.