Last weekend, my friend from the Gym Mr. Gopal asked me to join in for a trek to Kumara Paravatha. I willingly agreed as this was my chance to lose a couple of pounds almost instantly.
A trek to Kumaraparvatha (Kumaraparvath) @ 1714m is arguably the most strenuous in Karnataka making this beautiful mountain in the Western ghats so enticing to me. Subramanya is situated at the foothills of western ghats in Dakshin Kannad district, famous for the Kukke Subramanya temple.
There are two routes to the peak – one from Kukke Subramanya, a steep ascent of 14 kms through evergreen forests for the first 5 km and thereafter through the grasslands of shola forests right till the peak. With water available only at three points along the route and the sun beating down relentlessly. (Thank God it is December) this is the more commonly used route up to the peak, despite its obvious level of difficulty.
The other route from Somwarpet, on the other side of the hill, is far more beautiful as it runs entirely through thick evergreen rainforests, except at the very end, when the challenge is from somewhat steep, bare rocky terrain. This last stretch uphill can frighten the faint-hearted, though anyone can do it with a little caution and teamwork (and good shoes).
More than anything else, we had to be prepared for extremely high speed gales at the top which may make it impossible to pitch the tents. It could have also rained heavily and drench us to the bone. I was told, on account of the unpredictable weather conditions and difficulty in fetching water, we would in all probability have to live on fruits and pre-cooked food for almost 30 hours.
We took second route up and the first route down on the return.
We left for Bangalore onboard the Lalbagh express on Friday reaching Bangalore at 10.30 PM (I was expecting bangy to be chilly in December) immediately leaving for Somwarpet, which was a 7 hour drive. Our Adventure started right from the railway station, where my tempo driver was pulled up for violating parking rules. Our driver was race maniac. Despite the fact that he lost track of the way and was lost, he still made us reach Somwarpet at 5.30 AM the next day. Just after breakfast and packing up mats and backpacks, we started trekking at about 8.30 AM. Soon after the forest check post, we encountered a small stream, and a forest waterfall, the incline was gradual as promised, and the scenery thru the forest was simply breathtaking. We could see the trail that we were taking but couldn’t exactly see the trail in front of us, because as soon as we reached a peak and followed the trail, we saw another peak to conquer.
At about 1.30 PM we had reached the peak. The views were splendid, there was no one on top apart our trekking party. We discovered we were ahead of time and soon me and a couple of others, went down another 1.5 Kms to fetch some water, from a so called stream which took almost 20 minutes to fill a bottle of water. ( I was thinking of having a shower..)
Soon, we had lunch which was fruits, biscuit and cup noodles. The evening set in pretty soon, forcing us to pitch in our tents. Kamesh, our guide put his best foot forward and made Sambhar and rice for everyone, Gail winds started to set in and soon we realised our efforts to have a camp fire were in vain. We went to bed at 7 PM that night.
At just about 2 I felt the need to have a leak, which was constantly deffered by gail storms which successfully ripped apart the outer of our tent. I managed to get up at 4 AM finally..
All of us were up the next day at 6.30, and had to accept the hard reality of not having water to brush or for anything essential. At 8.30 we had packed up and started our downward trek towards Kukke Subramaniya.
This route was hard, with no forests, rocky terrain, and non stop gail storms which constantly re-emphasised my trust in God. Our trek of 16 Kms took more than 7 hours. It was 3.30 PM by the time we were down, and soon after a dip at the crystal clear waters of the Kumardhara river, we had no option but to skip the visit to the temple. We had a train to Chennai at 11 PM from Bangalore, with chances of boarding it being very bleak. More particularly after our driver lost track of the route and wated more than an hour. However, his driving skills were put to test and luck favoured us with little traffic inside Bangalore city, finally helping up boarding the train at the eleventh hour.
Back at home, Monday morning I realised I lost close to 2 Kgs, however the sore muscles in my leg, have not allowed me to workout for till date. Moreover, the trek also costed me my Nike running shoes as the sole tore off completely.
I am back and fully charged, awaiting more such treks in the forthcoming days!
