Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Trek to Kumara Parvatha-Part 3

We quickly settled down, put all our luggage into the tents and got into warm clothes. Now the next task ahead of us was to ignite the camp fire. All of us huddled together around location Raj, Sada and Kanthesh got into the task of lighting the firewood. :) With all the mist it was a tough one I must say. Finally with many special ingredients that Puneeth put along with the firewood we were able to put up a decent camp fire.

Our Camp fire :)

Most guys were exhausted and went to bed early. A couple of us sat outside savoring the beauty of Kumara Parvatha at night. The mist lifted after a while and we could see the entire hill range bathed in moon light. I was a marvelous sight and will stay in our minds forever. We decided to start the next part of our trek at 6 in the morning and went to bed. Raj and Sada being the wild life enthusiasts that they are went to the stream next to our camping site to try their luck in finding some rare amphibians and reptiles and they came back with pretty good pics :)

It was about two in the morning when Kiran woke up. In the process of getting out of his tent, which meant waking up Raj and Sada who were sleeping outside the tents in their sleeping bags woke all of us up. Then started the session of horror stories which didn't last long. As the tents were overcrowded all of us were cramped and we decided to get out of the tents and stretch our legs a bit. We noticed that the camp fire had died out. Raj tried to move the fire wood, lo and behold!!! Warming itself on the warm ashes was a shieldtail.

The rest of the night was uneventful.

Sada woke us up in the morning @ 6 and only a few of us were to climb to the peak. We decked ourselves up with warm clothes and came out of the tent. The cold was spine chilling!!! I wasn't able to speak properly, but this condition of ours did not last for long :) As the six of us started climbing the cold was no where to be found and we were panting and puffing in no time.

We clicked as many pics as we could on our way to the top. I this frenzy little did we realize that there was an alternate route to the peak and entered a forest nearby. The forest was leech infested. There were thousands of them. We had to run to save ourselves from them. No matter what they managed to get us :( especially me and Kantesh who were at the mercy of leeches. Pawan's leech socks were proving to be a boon.

This is why you should always wear leech socks!!!

We endured all this and went further in the route only to realize that it was taking us down the slope instead of taking us to the peak. So we turned back and retraced the path.

I and Raj stayed back while Sada, Kantesh, Abhi and Lokesh went upto the peak and returned back. Our trek finally remained incomplete. We came back to the camping site packed up our tents and started the trek back to Subramanya. Our last stop was at Bhattara mane.


Group photo @ Bhattara Mane

After having a relishing lunch there we continued our trek back. We reached Subramanya at 5 pm, caught the last bus to Mangalore and closed our eyes...



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