Kumara Parvata... :)

Kumara Parvata alias KP... it was one of the treks i always wanted to go on.. Had heard a lot about it, had seen real wonderful pictures of them too...

Anala called me and asked KP next weekend? He he he, felt as though i heard the best of the question and at that moment i was IN.... Had to wait for a week... Whole of that week all i did was thinking about how beautiful the place might be.. :)
THE DAY came in and i had to pack my bags and run.. Bus was at 10.. and i was all set by 7.. :D yeah so very much me.... We packed our bags gathered in majestic around 9.45 PM on friday... Vinod,Jayashree,Anala,Sarathy and me.... Started and on the way i had promised all of them that i would wake them up when we pass through hassan(whatever the time may be)... And ofcourse no doubt i did.. :D

Reached Kukke Subramanya by 5 in the morning. First thing first had a nice cup of tea on the chai shop... Since karthik maasa ended there were special pooja done in temple and fair was supposed to start the next day... We finished our breakfast in one of the hotels near the temple. (Couldn't go to the hotel which Anala referred they said they will take time to provide bfast)

We started our climb at 6 and first question was to vinod, how far is the climb to Bhatra mane(since that's the place we can halt for a while). Vinod replied... JUST 10 mins :D and just another 2 hills climb and we are there... Ok.. we really didnt know how long does vinod mean by 10 mins..... I used to think, Vinod is one serious kind of a person. But by the end of trek we learnt how much fun is Vinod.. :) He claimed himself as SILENT person... we got to know how he is with TIME.. :D

Since we started our climb early in morning, initially it was little dark. After walking a while, could see the forest is getting thicker and inclination in the climb getting little tough... After a while reaslised i am surronded my lotsa of mosquitoes.. Even when no one at home will be bit by mosquitoes, i can see they find me. Now think of my state... :( Loads of mosquitoes bit me :( , hands started looking red. I realised this was the the case with just me and Sarathy... Rest everyone looked fine and no mosquito bites :O . I was surprised but this is happened to me before a lot of times.. I looked for help from anala for odomos( Since i had known she had put it in her bag while packing). But she changed her bag and she forgot to take it from that bag.. :) Unlucky me...

One good thing is i had a full armed t-shirt to help me in the situation.. We walked for quiet a while probably for two hours or so. The questioned popped up again. How far is it Vinod.... Same answer. We reframed the question. How many more hills to be crossed? Surprisingle same consistent answer .........

Vinod started singing malayalam song... Songs which we never understood, and ofcourse in one strange way( I am sure the song would be nice to listen to when sung in a nice way).... We were stopping here and there and we had Vinod booosting our energy, pushing us by words.. litreally pushing us at times... and how can i forget the way he said., go gooooo gooooooooooooo goooooo with one malyali accent.. :) But that's the only thing which made our climb easy and nice...

Whenever we stooped we found issues with mosquitoes and we were taught to do a chicken dance to get rid of mosquitoes.. We enjoyed it.. we did it almost through out the trek...

Jaychee was told by vinod that if she walks ahead and quick she get longer breaks.. Poor thing, she believed and she walked ahead of all of us.... She started saying "Move it move it" and started to walk ahead of us...Suddenly she started running backwards and she isnt telling me anything.... All she told me was RUN RUN RUN... and we both started to run back... She saw a SNAKE!!!!!! Me and jaychee are dead scared of snakes, we cant see them, we cant stand them and we cant even look at them in TV... Imagine what would be running on our minds.. :) Then after that vinod took the lead and we both walked in midst of people.. :D

Leeches weren't supposed to be there in this season... But my luck, i did get few of leech bites too....We reached grasslands by 10 and after that we lost the fear or snakes and we forgot about it compleetly till we were climbing down........On our way there were lotsa of gooooooo gooooooo gooooooo and some more malyali songs.... We made lot of fun of sarathy saying " You don't have a facebook account? What do u do?"... We scared Sarathy, that will discuss more on him on FB and we will surely create one fake id on his name and play around.. he he he he... We almost felt like we took rukku with us... :)

Vinod was telling a story about bhattra mane people and bhattru. Bhattru owns a house and a piece of land on one of the peaks on the way to kuamara paravata.. i was surprised to know there is no other way to reach his house than come through this 6 kms walk through the junlge. He cooks and serves food for people who trek and gives them place to stay there tooo... All you need to do is call him up and inform how many people are coming and how many meals do you need.... Bhattru has one servant who carrys stuff for him everyday(rice,dal,etc).. That guy would run up and down couple of times a day.. Should have seen him running up the hill.. We had parked ourselves for some rest and we saw that guy with one rice gunny bag on his shoulder running towards bhattra mane.. Man we were stunned to see him... But that's his life.... We were sooooo astonished to see him...

We fianlly reached Bhattru mane by 11 AM and we had plans of finishing our lunch and start the climb again. We had decided we will climb the hill and come back and stay at bhatrra mane... We were all hungry and tired and sat and relaxed.... Drank water from stream and water tasted soooo sweet and nice...

We saw already soo many people there at bhattra mane. People who have climbed down and resting there, People who are set to climb that day.... Big bunch of people... Every group was big numbers.. Vinod was telling that bhattru was disaapointed when vinod said just 5 people are coming.. :)

Bhattru is one nice man... He is all upto himself and he loves people around and sure is a quit wit guy... He speaks kannada,malayalam,tamil,hindi,tulu and what not... He would converse with each person in any language he wants to. Since vinod is a frequent KP visitor, he is known Bhattru very well.... Bhattru was fun to converse with... :)

"FOOD IS READY" one wonderful most awaited statement to hear... he he he he.. we all rushed with our plates and ate royally.. Rice with Potato erulli huli was awesome..... We finished our lunch and started our climb. Now we left lots of our things at his place and we packed just 2 back packs with food and cameras and water and resumed our climb towards kumara parvata....

We asked Vinod the basic question agaian... HOW FAR? Ofcourse he replied consistently "10 MINS" and he told us we will try to make it to the peak, but worst case will climb till where ever possible. We had to be back before it was dark....

There is one view point near bhattra mane... There are some 4 benches put in there on a concreted place... We sat there and one photo session happened and it was sooo beautiful from there.. wherever we saw we could see GREEN...... Moved on from there... Our aim was to climb Pushpagiri atleast... Paid toll to enter the forest area( Where vinod had a say as he paid 115 and wont pay 200 and all that).. Started our climb again... Now it was just grassland.. we had to climb in midst of grasslands....

Now we were lot tired... we were still trying to walk and make it to the peak and mantap... After walking for 2 hours we could see mantap and now we had more energy to walk... Vinod is a POWERBOOSTER.. he would push everyone, ask them to take deep breathes and helped them to strech and walk..... we did make it to peak of pushpagiri... we were walking beyond it and we stooped for a photo session... Lots and Lotsa of photos taken. Suddenly Jaychee said... i want a nice picture with green background.. Here we go me and anala were ready with my green duppatta just behind jaychee's head.. :D Photographer Sarathy took a lot of pictures too...(he prefers taking pics inclined ;) ). Then we started our downclimb towards mantapa....

While climbing down legs started shaking.. It was hard too.. But lesser breaks.. We went to mantap and we had few more clicks there and we started towards bhattra mane...

After downclimb of 2 hours we reached bhattra mane.. on our way down same question of how long was asked and same answer of 10 mins was given... Then we met few guys on our way who asked Vinod how long and he had answer right.. he said 40 mins... He explained later that we would ask him 4 times atleast every 10 mins and he prefers saying 10 mins always and he called himself an consistent SILENT person...

Everytime we used to sit and take a break he would start singing and that indicated he is trying to chase us... so for us all we know about the malayalam song was used to chase us.. :D he he he he he...

We reached bhattra mane by 7 in evening and all we wanted was to sleep.. We came and we saw sooo many people already there.. We came in and it was said food would be served by 9 and we were too tired of sit and wait.. we went and pulled our sleeping bags and slept till they called us for food.. Outside there were too many conversations which we could hear... Belive me there was one guy who was speaking soo much about himself,his life and what not and rest of the people just listened and lotsa of questions asked.. That guyes bullied everyone is all i can say... :P

Sarathy is one guy to be mentioned about... He was carrying i guess every kind of medicine he could... We started to sing "Nedaduva Medical Shopuuu" he he hehe and pulled his leg around a lot.....
Anyways once done with dinner all i remember is getting up in morning.. Got up and all of us had tea and we had one more set of photo sessions(potraits) from vinod's camera... We walked up to the view point and spent ample time there.... GREEN GREEN and GREEN is all we saw and we were lost there... None of us wanted to come back.. :( Alas we cant do that and had to be back... But the beauty of it is going to stay in our eye forever...
We came back and ate out breakfast and got ready. Vinod has promised to take us to a place where bhattru generate electricity... We did manage to walk down to the stream and ofcourse it was nice and beautiful...

We started our downclimb and gettign down took 4 hours too.. we decided to play anatashkari.... and we sang and sang and sang..... Was nice to remeber olden days when we used to play it.... Most memorable song we sang was "Nee Neerige baare chenni bindge hidkondu"... ha ha ha and everytime we made Anala walk with a water bottle... he he he... that sons is still on my mind....

We reached Kukke by 4 and we had our lunch.. finally found a place to stay and got freshened up and we left for the temple... Sakat timing we just made it to the temple just before closure... :) Roamed around did some shopping and got onto the bus at 10 PM....

One of the most memorable treks.... Songs like "neerige baare chenni","move it move it", malyali songs(though cant name any)... and Ofcourse Goooooooo GOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOO of vinod.... awesome one..

Cheers to Vinod,Anala,Sarathy,Jaychee and ME... :) Awesome one... :)