Kumara Parvatha!!A class apart,An unforgettable

"while entering not so unheard place called kukke subramanya in DK district of karnataka in the early mornings , u cannot expect the sun to jump off this great mountain to meet you untill 9"

this s what one of my seniors had told me wen i was in prefinal year of my BE about this trekking place.Its a tradition in JC Boys hostel to trek kumara parvatha in thier final year.

We (a group of 15) made all the necessary requirements the day before the trek and alighted the train from mysore to mangalore @12 10am. It took us to a station which is 7-8 km far from kukke @ 5 in the morning. We took a taxi from ther to kukke paying Rs15/head . We had Darshan as soon as we gt ther and had some break fast. We could not take bath as tat would have hampered the complete schedule of our trek and also it was not a unusual thing for us those days :-).
A small galli road to the right of the temple leads to parvata. We started our journey to the most interesting mountain of karnataka. my clock ticked 8.One of our friends came up with the idea of taking pepperments. Incidently this helped a lot. We puchased some 50 choclates.
As we felt like we were passing off the village , came a board saying "kumaraparvata 0.0 km". We started commenting on the probable reason for 0.0 and ther was a downpour of PJs asusual expected from JC CS guys.
We started from that milestone and the 15 people got segregated into 3 groups of 4 5 and 6 ppl each. The last team had two cameras, so they wer busy. I was eager to discover things fast and first so was in team 1. the middle people could not cope up with our speed nor nail down to the snail teams speed(hence forth team 3 is addressed as snail team). they wer left in between.
All the 3 groups had their own strategies of trekking and we used the small steps large distance formula to trek up as we anticipated much more further. and it did!!
Everyone of us had the same basic set of items and wer in good attire as it was cold out ther.The number of clothes on our body decreasing as the clock ticked . We used to take rests every 10 mins and at aroud 9 o clock our first glucose packet was open . they poured it into one of the bottles and started taking sips which was the first mistake. It drove us more thirsty and ended up drinking more water than required. after 1 and a half hour of trek we kinda got used to the pace and never felt problems untill we passed the first phase of the forest and entered the grasslands. Sun was shining and we took tougher roots to cut the distance.
Every now and then we kept meeting diversions and the markings made ther by earlier visitors helped a lot. it did not last long.We were at the top of some hil at around 11. We heard some dogs barking and some plantations in the grassland!! That was sufficient for us to know tht ther are some people ther.A persn named BHATT lives here . We had informed him earlier the day that we ll be coming ther fr the lunch .We wer amazed to hear from him that he does the above lines everyday!!!!!
We had good , awesome food and we did our dailies there then. He has a good sanitary facility by the way.We asked him to pack ricebath for that night that we had to spend at the top.
From bhats home we can see a sit out built by govt of karnataka. from which
place u get to see a huge mountain which reminded me of lakshya dialouges. That mountain looked as if it was twice the way we had come . We calculated 4 hours of trek to reach at a good pace. As usual i was in team1 and started off fast. We entered into the drylands and some SHOLA forests alongside. I felt like Sun was very Near for the first time and started off without looking back. I was about half a km past the sitout and snailteam was still there back with clicks for every possible poses.The routes appeared misguiding and we halted for the group to get together.
We met the CheckPost and we negotiated the fellow ther to bill only for 5 ppl.. that is 75/head * 5 . So the rest of the ppl wer an illegal entry but personally certified." NO kerosene No Yenne" shouted the checkpostmaster. We wer clever not to fall for him . Engineers!!
We entered the dryland and steeps started to incline at 45%(u cannot climb a road inclined at 50%, so 45% is like almost steep). We had to take help of all the limbs . As this steepy curves started morally hitting us came a group of 3 ppl aged 50+ who wer coming down the wy. We got re-energized. In no time came a group of foriegn environmentalists who had collected the wastes up ther and cleaned the top.
PPl started to open their glucoses and have them and this time without water. ppl started taking more halts . at 3 we came near a mantap, 4 pillars vertical and 3 above constituted it. Near to mantap we were pleased to hear the sound of a stream. So we drank our bottle water and filled the stream water . Many of the blogs i had read would either end here or describe the return from here. SO i had my own doubt bout the water filled!!!!!!!!!
As expected the upper stream had human excretae (ppl tend to search the cleaner stream to shit!). So we threw those bottles and took rest for sometime ther and waited for 15 mins for team 2 to arrive. We informed them bout the stream and not to waste water.We then moved round that small hill to reach to discover the real top which looked of the same heigth as the one we saw from the sit out @ BHATTS place.bt in another hour and a half we managed to reach the top of that mountain .We paced up coz we had this strong desire to accomplish watsoever.
It was 4 15 wen rajesh reached first ther . i reached next along with shankar.But we couldnt see a flag ther(as flag signifies the top). and the mountain next to the one we were standing was almost of the same height but looked taller than ours.We had enough of paradoxes already.
By chance i happened to see the flag fluttering in the next mountain. I was taken aback. We had to go down this mountain(i call it fraud hill) and climb the next one. OOps!!
We decided to start at 4 30 and wrote a letter to team2 to stay back as it would get too late by the time they come to fraud hill(NO 2 ppl had cdma chae).
We started runing down the hill and came to a juncture werin there were substrates of camp fires and several routes to go after. the info-board there meant diff things for each one.EVRYone started with diff route and confirmed on the perfect one. We had to literaly climb a 30ft arock @50% to reach a high grassland.
By this time team2 had come to fraud hill and they took a decision to follow us irrespectively and wrote the same letter to snail team.they started running down.
It was 5 30 wen we reached the flag .ther is a rocky compound to the small shiv temple there near the flag. We saw the amazing sunsetting into the arabic sea.
It was 6 30 wen team 2 were at the flag. At this time snail was still reading the letter.They raced down immediately without hearing to our words. We torched them the way but how culd you expect 6 volt batteries to pierce such a forest.Unfortunately snail had 2 batteries out of 7 and 3 food packets out of 7. Snail had 7 people in their team!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was dark and we could hear snailers voice saying "bashya bashya(tats wat i was calld amongst)"
We went down and helped them come to the flag. we collected wood. put fire . had food and slept on the top.It was just 8pm. i got up and thought was nearing Sunrise, was shocked to see my watch trying to hit 10!! ther we were in the middle of the night shivering in the cold with everything coverd to the core!! imagine the fate.
We put the fire again.spreaded the fire to all the grasses over ther so that we get the warmth.ppl started running around to get heated up. Everything went in vain.SUTTA helped some ppl. But fr not more than 5 mins.We dint go to Lu to conserve heat(heights)
We somehow managed to push the night and were ready for the sunrise.Had very good snaps .Made a video in babu's cideo cam.
left ther by 7. took a diff route from ther and came down to somavarapet via hegdemane . fought with the checkpost person ther ilegal entry enroute.Had lunch in somvarpet .the amount of food stuf we took from mys helped us to survive the entire next day.started to mys and By 6 pm tat evening we were all in our beds .

it has been 7 months since that day and not a single instant is volatile bout this trek.All time awesome :-)

Mission accomplished ..

here comes the names of ppl

team1

rajesha aka raju
vishwas nadig ,hey tats me
Shankar aka shanky
Daddy aka mryutyunjay
srinivas aka Seena

team2
padmakar aka paddy
ratnakar aka ratu
santosh aka anna
anil aka dd

snailers
vikram gara aka langa
nikhil aka baba
kulya aka vinay
suhas aka kudka
sagar kashyap
babu aka vp :-)

PS:
time reqd for trek up : 8hr up from kukke to flag/5 hr from kukke to mantap/3hr from kukke to BHATTS place
time reqd for trek down:6hr to hegdemane from flag/hegdemanen to somvarpet 1 hr(bus only @ 4 pm evryday)
things to be taken: glucose,waterbottle,salt,matchsticks and wood sticks along the way up, kerosene,shoes,glouse,rugs,Battery,choclates,lots of food,monkey caps,plastic cover, first aid[vimp]

kindly oblige for any typos here and ther

Y is this Named So?

hello friends,

ग्नातुम इच्छु : इति जिग्नासु: ||
I am opening this blog so that i document the things i dreamt and dream of which often puzzles or amazes me out. Let me show light on these and hence the name to it as explained earlier.

U can join the discussion if it turns you on!!