Kumara Parvatha - Beauty beyond belief...

Moral of the story : If you're an amateur/wannabe trekker and/or haven't been physically active for a month leading upto the trek, you're gonna have a rough time. As yours truly found out...

Yet, this trek was a legendairy experience! In this post, which shall narrate the story of the scaling of the hill named Kumara Parvatha, there is

Comedy!
Drama!
Action!
Perspiration!

aaaaaaaaand...

NUDITY!

Intrigued?! :D Read on...

Friday night we leave Saturday morning get to Kukke Subramanya leave after 2 hours of getting there 8-10 kms of gruelling up hill trekking reach small guest house types called Bhattr mane have lunch then sleep in tents till 4.30 am start again early Sunday morning 5.15 am (sleep, oh sleep, where art thou!?) trek in dark for 3 hours empty stomach then breakfast then trek more reach peak at 10 am become breathless at sight start trek back lunch at bhattr mane at 2 pm and back to kukke at 5.30 pm

Whats the word I'm looking for? Ah..."Nutshell"...Yeah thats what that was...

And believe me, thats how the trip literally breezed through me! Two days full of huffing puffing chatting laughing singing eating eating eating and very little sleeping! On an average, the inclination at which we trekked uphill was around 30-40 degrees. Very few stretches of flat land...

Saturday is when it all started...The bus ride to get to Kukke was really abysmal, mostly because of a rather painful stretch of a semblance of a road...It woke all of us up at around 3 in the morning and didn't allow us to get some well needed rest...Anyways, we started at around 7.30 after some freshening up and started the trek...

Our first objective was to get to a place where we would have lunch (FOOD! more on it later...) and rest for the rest of Saturday.

Name : Bhattara mane.
Approx Distance : 8-10 kms
Terrain : moderate to rough, uphill

And so we trekked...3/4th of it was under the caring enclosure of the forest, and the Sun wasn't at its meanest so for a while it was all hunky dory and 'i'm one with nature' and all that...After a while, your lungs tend to push against your rib cage saying 'uh we're gonna be needing some oxygen here and PRONTO!'...And that's when u start thinking whether u really saw that snake slither into the bushes or not...

And just when you've given up all hope and are waiting for the sweet release, the forest ends and you're out in the open...Dehydrated, De-energized and de-bangalored! And that one bigggg spotlight's one you...And every step carries leads to ten more, and the trail never seems to end...And oh look, the water bottle in ur hand seems almost empty and ppl are giving vague numbers about how much farther away the destination is!

Just before you're throw up ur hands (if u have the willingness to) God says 'oko kok okokok here just around the corner'...And you get to Bhattr mane and throw ur head face hands whatever u can under the cooooooold water coming straight from heaven, through the tap! And then we eat!

Lunch @ Bhattr mane is a simple affair, a mean meal...A round plate, covered with rice so that u can't spot an inch of steel, and some sort of sambhar as a sumptuous topping. After that kinda trek, you'll eat pretty much anything. And there's pickle (Salt and electrolytes for the body according to VaatalMan...More about that later) and buttermilk. Buttermilk again very cooling and soothing and sigh...Vaatal was doing tequila shots of them! :D

Saturday ended with Antakshari and sleeping in tents. I sang my heart out and made the mistake of not wearing socks while sleeping, respectively.

Sunday early morning was uniquely fun! A torch and you and the quest to find some solitude to "download" as VaatalMan calls it, at 4.30 am. Oh and don't forget the bottle of water. After 3 minutes of careful reconnaissance, I mooned the wilderness and finished my duties! At some point, I was scared about the fact that a snake might find my posture a wee bit inviting and "jump" at the prospect! No such tings tankfully!

The early morning chill, a dark night trek's thrill and the stars. A perfect recipe for scintillation...and danger! We scaled in the darkness, slipping here, sliding there on an empty stomach. Harsh conditions indeed, but it has its merits! Remember the stars? Well apparently this place is very famous for shooting stars! I just missed one, in my stupid endeavour to capture the mesmerizing canvas on which God plays with dots. At which point somebody wisely said, "Some scenes are meant only for the human eye"...How true...

"MOoooooooooooooooorning's here! The morning's Here Sunshine is here! "


We missed the sun rise from the peak alright, but the peak did its magic by hiding the Sun from us and revealing it slowly like a rising curtain. As we felt the morning chill disappear slowly, we started to see the splendor around us. Must've been boring for those hills to just lie there day after day, getting hit by the Sun, but it sure did create a breathtaking spectacle. And it was just more inspiring as we scaled higher, to know what we're conquering : A majestic peak, and more so, ourselves....


And then the peak itself! One of the longest walks of my life has been the last few steps to get to the ever enticing flag, mounted to signify the end of your journey. The "mountainous" desire to just sit down RIGHT THERE weighing heavy on my shoulders and ur mind, and the Sun shining brighter than a thousand Suns didn't make it easy. But I did it...And GOD it was awesome!





"Climbing down is easier than climbing up"
"It takes lesser time to climb down than climb up"

Hindsight : Throw all that out of the window for KP folks. Cos its shit steep! And if you're climbing down in broad daylight, you'll be daylight's broad (you'll get done, like a starter in Barbecue nation).

Different people went back home with different aches n sores, and also with the exhilaration of a memorable conquest! Cheers KP!

P.S :

Before I sign off, a few words of praise for my mate in the trip, Vaatalman. (The moniker cos he looks just like Vaatal Nagaraj with his shades and that signature topi of his...Err, not so signature after all! )

He, as much as possible, waited for me to catch up (I had a tough time of it most of the time). Offered me practical advice like :

1. The glucose / electoral will help in preventing u from cramping up.
2. Always breath through the nose, and not through the mouth.

Thanks....

Life

This is a purely non philosophical post. Please read on if u even have minimalistic scientific inclinations...

"....If u imagine the 4500 million years of Earth's history compressed into a normal day, then life begins very early, at about 4 a.m, with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours (!).

Not until about eight thirty in the evening, with the day about five sixths over, has the Earth anything to show the Universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then finally the first seaplants appear, followed by the first jellyfish, and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna. At 9.04 pm trilobites swim onto the scene. Just before 10 pm, plants pop onto the scene. Soon after, with less than 2 hours left in the day, the first land creatures arrive.

Thanks to 10 minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10.24 the Earth is covered in great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all the coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 pm. and hold sway for about 3/4th of an hour. At 21 minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins.

Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight.

The whole of our recorded history, on this scale would be no more than a few seconds, a single lifetime barely an instant.

Throughout this greatly speeded up day, continents regularly slide and bang into each other at a clip that seems reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, oceans come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, once about 3 times minute, there is a flash bulb pop of a light marking the incidence of a Mansonized meteor or larger. Its a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long......"

Bill Bryson, you rock!