| Kalash (the Pahadi) |
| Parikshit Chowdhury (pari) |
| Mayank Singh |
| Vinay Pratap Yadav (Bareilly) |
| and Me |
Location : Kukke Subramanya, Western Ghats, India
A trek to Kumaraparvatha [13-Nov to 14-Nov, 2004] |
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Dates : 13-Nov-2004 and 14-Nov-2004 Location : Kukke Subramanya, Western Ghats, India |
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Those of you who are familiar with trekking spots in Western Ghats know that Kumaraparvatha is one of the toughest climbs. The terrain is tough, the weather is mostly on the extremes, water is scarce and it is very difficult at any point to know where you are... After the Yedakumeri trail, we were tempted to try a more difficult trek and Kumara Parvatha was the ideal choice. Inspired by the success of our groceries list for the last trek, we decided keep it the same - only change was that we carried seedless dates instead of chocolates and oranges instead of guavas.
Travel Information: The tickets can be booked to Kukke at KSRTC. Since it was festival season we could not get tickets at KSRTC. We booked tickets at Sri Durga Travels who coned us by showing a luxury bus with tickets worth Rs200/- each. But it turned out to be a crowded express bus hardly worth only Rs150/-. They are not nice people. Alternatively, people can get down at Gundya and catch any bus going towards Kukke from there. |
| The bus journey was far from being pleasant. We were not given the seats that we reserved... Damn it... it was not even the same bus. There were plenty of disgruntled people like us. But since every body was more worried about reaching Dharmasthala, no body told anything. Finally the bus started at around 11:00PM. You have plenty of private busses that go to Dharmasthala... but very few to Kukke Subramanya... the reason being the horribly bad road towards Kukke off NH48 (Bangalore-Mangalore Highway). But when Bareilly asked for 5 tickets to Kukke, the agent could not resist the temptation even thought he had no idea of going to Kukke. Even though we passed the Gundya at 5:10 in the morning, the conductor insisted that he would take us to Kukke after Dharmasthala (which is a cool 30 Kms ahead). We realised his plans only at the end of the 7 hour ordeal at Dharmasthala when he asked us to get down from the bus and shuttled us to Kukke in a KSRTC bus. Finally we reached Kukke at around 8:15... at least 2 and half hours late. Kukke has many clean public toilets... but I could not find a place to take bath... if you intend to visit the temple too... There is a small stream behind the temple... but you can hardly take a dip there. |
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The delay in coming to Kukke threw my plan out of place. I thought we could start trekking by 7:00 and by 10:30 we could have breakfast at Bhatta's house in Giri Gadde. But now we had to have breakfast in Kukke itself... After couple of rounds of Set Dosas and Masala dosas, we started the climb only by 9:45PM... There is a small road leading to the foothills of Kumaraparvatha which goes past "Anugraha Lodge". We filled our water bottles at a hotel on the way. They told us that many guys had gone ahead of us, but there would be no problems for provisions at Giri Gadde. After a Km walk, we find well written boards directing us into the woods. It was here I felt some thing wrong with my bag... I was confronted with the nemesis that Subhash endured all through out the Yedakumeri trip... a torn bag. it was a small cut at the bottom... but it managed to spoil the entire balance...
The first reaction of guys after looking at the woods was very enthusiastic... they said this was a real trekk compared to the railway track trail last month... This enthusiasm was very short lived... 10 minutes into the woods and we realised how difficult the climb would be. We were sweating in no time... humidity was high and there was no breeze at all... half an hour later we met Raghavendra and Srinivas - both of them were Mayank's seniors at college. |
| Tough Tough First Hour | |
| The used all the 4 days of holiday very effectively... they said that they spent an entire day on Kumaraparvatha. We also came to know that there was another big gang of people ahead of us... who had come with full family of 3 generations... We bid them by and continued on our mission... the terrain got more and more difficult and monotonous... steep or more steep... clearly this route (at least at this point)lacks the variety that most of other treks have. There is hardly any wildlife except the only snake that we saw... I was about to step on it when I saw this creature... the snake is so efficiently camouflaged that Mayank needed his glasses to actually spot it. It looked like a vegetarian tree snake... but no idea as to what it was doing on the ground moving so smoothly and stealthily. As it happens, it the last of any wild creature that we saw apart from ourselves. |  |
| 4 foot long green snake |
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We made slow and steady progress up the hill... We could not walk for more than 20 minutes without a break. At every break, our water resources depleted quite rapidly. Chikkis and Glucose packets emptied very quickly. At halfway through, i.e. after about an hour and a half of climb we rock on which directions are given for a stream. But the dreamroutes.org travelogue said the water source was too steep down and hence we decided to go ahead without straining ourselves more. After about 2 hours, we first saw the sky above us. Till then we were walking under a thick canopy of tall trees and climbers - typical of any rain forest. The first sight of of open space also reminded us of what we have accomplished till then... we could see the Kukke temple below... and we had indeed gained a lot of altitude... By now it was almost 12 and the morning breakfast was no where in our stomachs any more. We realised that oranges are the best fruits to be carried over treks.. too bad I had taken only one per person... |
| First look at the sky after two hours |
| After this, the terrain changed considerably... There were no tall trees; neither there was any canopies... we were exposed to mid-day sun and were getting exhausted soon. But the scenery got better and better every moment. The climb had also gotten less steep and we were making quick progress. The first signs of human inhabitation were a few forest department boards educating trekkers "not to tease wild animals". Here we met the last of the big group that had left before us. Two 40+ guys were slowly climbing their way up to Giri Gadde. One of them seemed to be experienced and was giving fundas about fatigue due to the limitations of the skeletal muscles top another... He even gave me fundas on how to cover the depth of photo by keeping a near object as well as a far mountains in a frame... that experiment gave only OK results. From there the Bhatta's place (Giri Gadde) was hardly 20 minutes. |  |
| Experiment Photo | |
| We reached there by around 1:00PM... that makes around 3 1/2 hours of climb at a above average pace. I say it was above average because there was another group that was with us when we met Raghavendra and Srinivas and they came to Giri Gadde a full one hour later than us. | |
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Giri Gadde is a home for only one family - the Bhattas. Mahalingeshwara Bhatta is the head of the family and has been there since 30 years. He grows what ever required for his family there - rice, vegetables and some commercial crops like Areca nut. He has a herd of around 10-15 cows. His brother delivers the milk to a hotel in Kukke every day... Can you believe it?? every day he climbs what most of us hope to do once in many years...
By the time we reached there there were already two big groups resting there. One was the big family and the other had 2 girls also and was going down. One of them (we call her 'janeman') overheard Kalash cribbing about paper plates and handed over all their paper plates to him. We made enquiries as to what can be achieved over the next two days... The general impression we got was that it was not possible to reach the top the same day. It gets very windy at night. The group that was going down had their tents torn by the wind. Hence, it would be great idea to camp for the night at the "Mantapa". The other group came in really handy to set our goals for the day. Giri Gadde Bhattas have engineered a mechanism to deliver water to their door step from a stream up hill some where. He says this water has never gone dry in 30 years. After freshening up, we had sandwiches for lunch. The same recipe as the last trek. We had taken the same amount of bread for lesser number of people. So we had a lot of left overs that we had to carry ahead. After lunch, we rested for a while before we started on out journey ahead at around 2:30 PM. |
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When we reach the end of Bhatta's property, we come across the forest guard. This is the latest addition to the geography. Any body that goes ahead has to pay Rs20/- as entry fees to climb Kumaraparvatha. In addition, Rs 15/- for every camera. No alcohol is allowed further. Also no explosives, no weapons of mass destruction, no fire arms. A guards tell you a big list of Do's and Don't's. Its good to see that Indian forest department finally waking up and doing some thing like this. However, it is not as efficient in action as it is on paper. Bareilly managed to sneak past a quarter even without knowing Kannada. There is a much needed dustbin at the forest check post. The should at least encourage trekkers and villages to collect garbage through the trekk and dump all of it here. They say they burn them once in a while - I don't know which is worse, plastic lying around or burning plastic in the woods. Also, with the wind speeds here, an open dustbin will only increase the littering. A quick look at the dustbin reveals a lot of liquor bottles. Either the trekkers like Bareilly are honest enough to bring the bottles back and dump here or they are all confiscated bottles emptied by the guards... :-) It would make a nice job profile... What do you do? I confiscate illegal liquor bottles and empty them. :-)) |  |
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| Beyond Giri Gadde, the terrain easier than before. But not too easy. There is a steady up hill and the sun was burning us down. However, there used to be frequent breezes which kept us going. There were hardly any trees but there was no shortage of beautiful flowers. But, due to concerns over the water source we over conserved our water. The heat was getting worse as we climb. Bareilly was close to getting a heat stroke. I wonder if skull sizes increase when a man is exposed extreme heat?? Theory apart, we had no way of knowing where our next stop - the "Mantapa" would be. People who were coming back always said it was close by - but nobody says exactly how far or how long it takes to reach there. After walking in hot sun and enjoying (??) the scenery like the one below for about 2 hours we could see the Mantapa for the first time. | ||
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| Wonderful Scenary beyond Giri Gadde |
| The site of the Mantapa was a relief. Once in sight, we could reach it with in half an hour. Near the Mantapa, there is a small stream good enough for all the water needs of the night - cooking, washing etc... Bareilly and Pari could not continue further beyond the stream without taking rest. Now that they knew that the destination for the night was almost reached, they slept at the stream for an hour or so. It was a sight to watch... two ultra modern city boys sleeping peacefully beside a stream over their towels as if two decades of civilisation had no effect on them :-) We had reached the destination all right... but there was lot work to be done yet. Fire wood and water... I can not say that there was plenty of them... but we could manage to get enough firewood for cooking. There was no problem for water... except that we had to get it from down below. At around 7:00 PM after watching a spectacular sunset in front of us we started cooking. After sunset, it slowly started becoming more and more wind. Making fire was easy. But keeping it alive was a challenge due to the un predictable direction of the wind. The first item was a hot hot tomato soup garnished by dry 123 Noodles. |  |
| The Mantapa |
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After two rounds of two soup each we finished 3 packets of Veg Pulao and 3 packets of bisi-bele-bath amongst us. We even emptied many packets of biscuits and snacks hoping the bag would be light for the next day. There was another group of 3 which also planned to camp at the mantapa. They had packed dinner at the Bhatta's and hence did not need fire at all. But 8 people was a bit too much to the shelter at the Mantapa. So, three of us decided to sleep on a rock overlooking the Mantapa.
As the night fell, we could see the Kukke town from the top well lit up... Vehicles moving... and some other distant town too... above us the clouds had started descending... and stars were not visible yet. As we slept (at least tried to sleep), the wind started to pick up. In the middle of the night, I searched through my bag for the trousers and wore them... every time I felt drowsy, the wind would wake me up wide and clear. Some how, after hours of struggle, we did get some sleep. |
| The Sunset | |
| Whenever I woke up in between I could see a clear sky with lots of stars... If only I was interested in star gazing, I could ave identified all the constellations - It was that clear... the clouds had descended beyond our height and so we could not see the Kukke town any more. As the night passed, some of slept peacefully (for unexplained reasons) and some others kept making noises all night. At 6:00 AM the next time I decided that it was enough taking so many cat naps and woke up every body. The varied colors that a sunrise produces is amazing. Even though we had a huge mountain to our east, we could see the colors on the western sky too... New day... Cool weather and night's sleep had increased every body's energy levels and we soon packed our bags, refilled our water containers and were gone by 6:30 AM. We left the garbage bag behind to be collected when we come back. | |
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The breeze was just too good. In no time we were already on top of the hill that was shielding us from the wind from one direction during the night. It was then we could see the first rays of sunlight. 15 hours ago the sun was in the opposite direction and made our life miserable while climbing... Now, wanted him to come up soon and drive the thick clouds away... Another 10 minutes, and we were ready for our breakfast.. biscuits and dates - both high energy stuff. All in all we were having hajjar enthu to go ahead even though the terrain was tough. After an hour and 15 minutes, we reached a peak where there was steep valleys on two sides of it... It was horribly windy at this spot... We dropped our bags and walked around for some time... It was so windy that it was difficult to walk straight... Photos do not make any justice to the real feeling. We posed by standing, sitting sleeping on precariously positioned rocks.
There was a path leading even further. But that was going down the hill. So we assumed that that must be the route from Somawarpet side. That meant that we were standing on Kumaraparvatha. There were many names inscribed on the rocks nearby which also suggested that it was Kumaraparvatha. More over, the dream routes.org travelogue said that the summit was 1 hour 15 minutes from the Mantapa and it was exactly that time since left the Mantapa. All this and the previous day's experience made us return back from that peak. Moments later we met a group that was going up hill and they said that Kumaraparvatha was still an hour from there. It was believable because, the other mountain was definitely taller than the one we had just climbed and Kumaraparvatha is supposed to be the second highest mountain. But all through out the trek we assumed that this is Kumaraparvatha and it was very hard for us to convince ourselves to go ahead. So against all our inner desires, we started our descent to the Mantapa at around 9:00 AM. Every once in a while Bareilly made half hearted proposal to climb back to go further to Kumaraparvatha. But the more we climbed down, stronger grew our resolve not to go back... Instead we got philosophical in trying to convince us that Kumaraparvatha summit would be same as the Sheshaparvatha summit and you see one... you would have seen them all... However deep down we all knew it was not like that. |
| The Sheshaparvatha summit |
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Getting down was easy - only when compared to climbing up. It was very hard to control any pace... we were just running down. We reached the Mantapa in just half an hour. By this time the wind had subsided and the sun had come out fully. We relished at the thought that Kumaraparvatha or Sheshaparvatha,, we were on top of the summit at the right time... What would be use of going on top of Kumaraparvatha when there is no wind... yet another reason to console ourselves and defend our decision of not climbing further. We ate the rest of the dates and some biscuits at the stream after finishing morning ablutions... After collecting the garbage bag, we marched ahead quickly towards Giri Gadde. The descent was not at all interesting... Although we took some time now-and-then to look around and enjoy the tranquility while it lasted, we were descending very fast. Some time then, I saw a familiar face which I could not place... Later I come to know that he was Girish Mattannavar. I only talked to him as a fellow trekker... enquiring only about his trek so far. By 11:30Am we had reached Giri Gadde. We dumped all our garbage in the dustbin and ate some guavas... Its sad that previous trekkers had left nothing for us... and we had to be contend with only unripe small ones...
At Giri Gadde, Bhatta was not expecting us so soon - since he knew how much time it takes exactly to go to Kumaraparvatha and come back. So we asked them to prepare another round of soup for us until the lunch was ready... His mother prepared it for us. After Soup, we rested for over an hour waiting for the lunch to be ready. The Bhattas were playing cards inside... I wonder whether this is what we associate with supposedly hardworking pahadis... Anyway, its their life. While we were resting, one by one of those guys who were going up were coming down... I was surprised to see that all those guys had returned exactly from the same spot... No wonder that the "Guru Prasad" who wrote the dreamroutes.org travelogue also did the same mistake. But most of them who came back... did so because of exhaustion and not by ignorance... we were the only guys who came back due to wrong mind set that we had already reached the peak. |
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| Lunch at Giri Gadde now costs Rs30/- Hot sambar, unlimited rice, butter milk and pickle is the menu. Even though most of our group was North Indian, they liked the food - primarily because they were very hungry. After we finished lunch we left almost immediately so that we could have enough time to catch a bus to reach Bangalore before it becomes too late at night. Just before we left Giri Gadde, one group that had gone to the summit also reached Giri Gadde. So they took 2 more hours than us... that means, from Shesha Parvatha, Kumaraparvatha is at max 1 hour further (since they also spent half an hour at Kumaraparvatha). The younger brother of Bhatta delivers milk to the hotel at Kukke in the afternoons. We left a good 10 minutes before him (actually at 1:15PM)... But down the hill, he over took us in just half an hour. We decided we would have as less stops as possible - once every half hour... A little after the first break at around 1:45... we reached the same stone where it was written "Water -->". This time again we were reluctant to go in since it was assumed to be steep... But Bareilly dared to go on the reconnaissance. While he was gone we tried to pull some Mogli tricks by hanging on to climbers... One of them came crashing down and poor Mayank had to run for his life... |  |
| Getting Down | |
| Bareilly came back with joy telling that the stream was good enough to take bath and it was not at all steep... (yeah, after climbing Kumaraparvatha for 2 days - most of the other things don't look steep) It was really not that steep. A little distance down the stream there was a small 4 feet high falls... we did not expect it to be as good as "chaddi falls" but nevertheless, we enjoyed an hour there taking bath in the ice cold water... After the refreshing bath, we started our journey to Kukke and we reached the foot hills by 3:50PM... that makes the total descent from Shesha Parvatha take just 7 hours including the one hour spent at the stream and the avoidable one and half hours spent at Bhattas waiting for the lunch. If only we knew this earlier, none of us would have returned from Sheshaparvatha. | |
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At Kukke, I quickly visited the temple and came back to catch a bus. It was a general consensus among all KSRTC officials that we have to go to Gundya and then catch a bus to Bangalore. So we did.
Travel Information: As in the morning, there are many busses shuttling between Dharmasthala and Kukke. But all of them will be crowded. We took a bus that started around 5:30. Bus Tickets cost Rs11/- from Kukke to Gundya Check post. From Gundya check post, we can get busses to Bangalore... all busses from Dakshina Kannada have to pass through this point.. hence that should not be a problem. We got a bus in 10 minutes (at 6:30 approx) ... but a seat to sit was available only in Sakaleshpur. The bus dropped us Bangalore at 1:30 AM. |
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| The torn Bag |