Kumara Parvata Trek

I heard about this trek by so many people in office and off office quoting that this is the toughest trek in Karnataka. So when I checked out the BMC schedule I decided to give a try. Called couple of friends and none seems to be available for the scheduled dates. As usual I decided to go alone. On 1^st Oct morning we landed in Subramanya Village, freshen up and had breakfast.

Pic: The third peak which stands highest in the picture is Kumara Paravata

The  Kumara parvata  lies in the backdrop of ancient shrine of Kukke Subramanya as shown in the picture and it is the third highest peak in Karnataka at an altitude of 5136ft. At the start when one of the trekker shown me the peak and said we are heading there .I said “WOW”. But I did not know how exhausting the trek would be. It is 14 kms from the base. 

Soon after some briefing from the Guide and collecting our sleeping bags and our baggage we started to Bhattara Mane , 6kms from the base and where we will have our lunch and move on to peak after lunch. So the trail till Bhattara Mane would be like 4kms hill trekking + 2kms grass walking. Hill trekking is in the forest, the climate is quite warm along with leaches on the ground.  By the time I completed the hill trekking my T-shirt and Jeans got wet with the sweat. Finally here comes the grass:

From here the Subramanya village looks like :

 

 

And after another 1.5kms further from here there is first glimpse of Kumara Parvata :

WOW isn’t and after watching the beautiful scenery for some time we started to move on to Bhattar Mane which is another 0.5kms away.  Had our lunch. Changed our clothes,I got rid of my Jeans and wore tracks .  Took rain coat,camera, cap and started again to the peak of Kumara Parvata. My guide strictly told us  we should be start trekking down by 5PM irrespective of whether we reached the pick or not and come back to Bhattar Mane for the night halt. So we started walking fastly to the peak and thus started our journey to the peak which is 7kms away:

The view is splendid. First of all it is completely greenery and filled with mountains where ever you look. Every now and then I used to stop and feel the beauty surrounding by, take a snap and move on. In the process I was alone either some people are far ahead of me or far behind me. After one and half hours of trek I reached to midpoint of the journey to the peak where I met my guide and  other two gals in our batch.

 

And from here on we 4 continued to go in a group not because we wanted but our speeds got coincided as we move along. We trekked for another half an hour and finally able to reach top of the first peak. Suddenly clouds started hitting the mountains.

We started to move on and after another half an hour we reach PUSHPA GIRI (Mountain of Flowers). This is the second peak. From here Kumara parvata is another 2 kms away. My guide said it will take another one hour to reach the peak of Kumara Parvata.

  

 You need to check out the valley from Pushpa giri . It is amazing .The gals started whispering loudly “HOW brilliant the place is”. One even called someone to share the ecstasy. By the time I came to my senses for taking the snaps the clouds covered us I could not able to take the snaps of the valley as nothing is visible. I am completely tried by then. My Guide Krishna offered some Chikis, which gave me some energy to move forward. We rested there for some time relaxing and glaring at the valley.

Guide Krishna relaxing with Chikki

 

Now from Pushpa Giri peak to Kumara Parvata the trail is through the 400mts of dense forest and rest rock climbing which is very steep. 

At first I did not know the forest is hub for the leaches. I am casually taking the snaps of the forest and then suddenly the gals started shouting and then I realized there at least 10 leaches on both my legs. I started removing them on my left leg and by the time I cleaned them my right leg has even more leaches. I recognized there is no point in clearing the leaches there and so walked fastly to find a stone and stood on it and cleared the leaches. Then all 4 of us decided to do sprint till the rock. Once the guide counted 1 2 3 we ran very fastly till the rock. Here we cleared all the leaches and then started climbing it.

 And after doing so we reached the peak of the Kumara Parvata. It is damn beautiful. We felt it is worth the strain we have undergone to reach the peak.

By the time we reached the peak the guys in our camp who already reached there started climbing down. We spent around another 30 minutes on the peak taking snaps, roaming all corners of the peak.

Climbing DOWN:

 It started raining when we are about to start so I wore my rain coat and put my camera in my guide’s bag. It is 4:45 PM by then.  There is another batch that climbed from another side of the mountain and they wanted to join us. So we waited for them and finally started our journey trekking down. Our first hurdle is climbing the steep rock we climbed up. One wrong move you will reach the ground very fast. The gals are little bit scared though but eventually made it. Again we ran through the dense forest and came to the Pushapa giri peak and the clouds suddenly cleared out and shown the NARAYANADRI (even higher peak than Kumara Parvata and is still to be explored by people). It is is one of the Gigantic Mountain peak I have ever seen. By the time I cleared the leaches and taken o the camera out clouds came by and I am unable to take picture of it. Since there is nothing much I can do I handovered my camera to my guide and started climbing down.

My guide said he will come last so I moved down very quickly taking the steeper paths rather than the flat ones. By the time I reached the midpoint it became pitch dark and I do not have the torch. So I joined a group of another 6 to 7 people who also belong my camp. We have had only 3 torches. So the last three people shared only one torch. I am at the last. Since it is pitch dark we could not able to see the path. When we misplaced our foot steps on the rolling stones we slipped down adding to these woes it started raining heavily. Now even the normal stones turned slippery. My shoes got completely wet, my track got completely wet ,since we are looking down and walking, the rain water reached by back from the neck portion and thus making  my T-shirt wet. We do not have any other option except to move forward. We are walking walking and walking but the halt destination is nowhere near the sight. We thought we lost the track and suddenly someone shouted that the batteries in the torches are running out. So we kept on moving in the rain and there is no place to take rest. If you switch of the lights you become one with the forest. We shouted, we whistled but got no replies.

We moved on with just hope and walked for another one and half hours and finally found the halt place. By the time we reached the place we are completely drenched, exhausted and smelling very odd. I changed my clothes, had a food which tasted splendidly and entered my sleeping bag. That is the best sleep I had in almost last 6 months.

I woke up next morning completely relaxed and energized. I decided to trek down very fastly and I wanted to be in top 5 and eventually I was the second not because first guy is great but I allowed him to be first. WINNING is an option after all :) . After climbing down when I looked at the mountain from the village, it feels like WOW.

PS:

1) KP trek is tough in the sense it is very exhaustive.

2) Out of 24 only 13 made it to the peak almost 50% could not make it.

3) Interestingly all the couple in the group could not make it to the top: P

4)I learnt what to take for the trek and what clothes to wear.