Well to start off I checked for blogs on Kumaraparvata(KP) trek. I found some fantastic blogs. While most of the blogs written were for dry weather trek, the one we planned(or rather did not plan well) was when Monsoons was in full flow.
Having previous experience of covering few difficult terrains, I just thought "so many people trek KP, whats great in that lets just do it".
Coming to my experience, being a guy who is born and brought up in Dandeli, Sahyadri, esp during monsoons, has never failed to amaze me. Last year we the green route trek, which was simply awesome. KP trek was a backup plan then, i.e. if RPF dint allow us to go ahead with the illegal Green Route trek we thought of covering KP.
Since we did not face any problem in Green Route trek, KP remained a distant dream. My roommate, Harsha started bugging me to plan this trip in summer and I told him let the pre-monsoons start, we shall plan. But when we actually traveled it was monsoons. Karthik, Harsha, Nataraj & Vinayak who were with me for Green Route trek got ready along with 1 more guy.. Without any doubt the expectations were very high..
Preparations:-
Most of the preparations were based on the reviews from travel websites and blogs. Also my roommate's friends had trekked so the inputs were taken.
I called up Bhattara Mane to intimate them that we will be coming for Lunch on Saturday. The elderly gentleman from the other side said "Tumba male untu, namma mane varige barlikke adilla, munde hattodu tumba kashta ide" which translates to "Its pouring heavily, you can come till our house, but its difficult to climb further". I replied that we will try our best.(Most of the people in my team were unaware of this conversation).
I asked my roommate to call the forest officer Jayaraj, but we couldn't reach him. Also we dint bother trying much. This Ultimately turned out to be a blunder.
The original plan was:
Sat, June 20 : Kukke to Bhattara Mane(6.5 KM) + Bhattara Mane to Kallu Mantapa (2.5 KM)
Stay overnight at/near Kallu Mantapa
Sun, June 21 : Kallu Mantapa to KP peak(5 KM) + Get down from Somavarapet Side(7 KM)
Take any bus and reach Bangalore.
As per plan we Booked seats in Kukke Shree Travels(Volvo) and reached Kukke by 8 AM. There were already hints of showers.
We freshed up, had breakfast and started our journey towards Bhattara Mane @ around 9.30 AM.
We overlooked the advise given by my roommates friends to carry at-least 2 Liters of water per person and had to face the wrath of sun. We had almost covered 3.5 or 4 KM when all of a sudden it rained heavily. Though it drenched us, it was a welcome rain for us as we had little water left with us.
One of our Nataraj was not feeling comfortable and because of that the pace was bit slow. Still we managed to reach Bhattara Mane by 12.30 PM. First thing we did there was to get rid of the leaches, which grew fat sucking our blood.
We had a shock when we heard that no overnight camping is allowed during mansoons, because of heavy winds. The second shocker was when we learned that Somavarapet side route is closed as it's too dangerous during wet conditions.(That increaded the trek by 7KM if we were to continue with our plan).
We had lunch at Bhattara mane and left to get permission from forest department (with (over)confidence that we can convince Forest officer, we carried all our luggage). It was 2.15 PM and Mr. Jayaraj straight away rejected us permission!! We tried to convince but it fell on def ears. But he assured he will leave us even by 6Am the next morning.
So we were left with no option but to bring in a drastic change to our plan,
The updated plan looked like:
Sat, June 20 : Kukke to Bhattara Mane(6.5KM)
Stay overnight at Bhattara mane
Sun, June 21 : Trek to KP peak(7.5 KM) + Get down from Kukke Side(14 KM) - Total 21.5 KM
The updated plan meant we had to cover 21.5 KM on Sunday, then travel overnight to Bangalore in an unreserved bus and work on Monday!!
Reluctantly we came back to Bhattara mane, dumped our luggage and went out to pass the time. We had dinner and slept in Bhattara mane.
That weekend there were around 8 teams(3 teams including mine stayed in Bhattara mane, while others had tents).
We met a guy Uttam(who has covered KP twice & his team was the only team, other than mine which managed to reach KP peak that weekend). He advised us not to start trek early morning because the wind speed would be too high. Also we were informed by another team that the forest after Shesha Parvatha had too many leaches and that's the reason they were not planning ahead.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sunday we got up bit late, freshened up and reached forest office at 8. I was done with the formalities & paying fees by 8.15 AM.
We started walking along the grassland. The visibility as informed by Uttam was very poor and the winds speed was too high(enough to throw us off-balance). We trekked for around 2 KM and had breakfast. Over the breakfast one of my friend(the one who was not feeling comfortable) asked me shall we return from Mantapa?
I just said, if that's what everyone want then I'm fine, but for me the plan is a complete failure and I'm gonna come back to KP soon.
That was enough to push everyone. We reached Kallu Mantapa in no time.
The next climb was the most challenging one. The winds showed no mercy & was challenging us like hell. In few places we had to hold another person to walk. There were places which were steep on one side and the wind was pushing us in exactly the same direction, we had no option but to duck down and wait for wind to decrease.
After walking 3 KM we reached Shesha Parvatha. Then we entered the forest, with the fear of leaches. But entering forest was a big relief from winds.
We walked along the water stream and for few 100 meters we had to climb in the rocky path of water stream. to reach the final rock.
There were many challenging & risky times when few of us felt quitting is the best option, but we continued. Finally we were on the top of KP.
Standing on top of KP was hell, the wind was literally tearing us.
We relaxed for some time in the water stream, had snacks and then came the thought that we have to climb down 14KM(half of that again in extreme winds). We started our journey back.
While climbing the wind was blowing from back(approx 30 degrees from back), but while climbing down it was approx 60 degrees on our face. I had to hold my roommate for at-least half a KM to save him from winds. Also the rain drops were hitting our face like bullets and we had to duck down for minutes in few places.
We climbed down pretty fast, and reached Bhattara Mane. Just picked up our luggage and started walking back to Kukke.
Once we reached Kukke we booked a room, had a shower, put on warm clothes (for whole day we were completely drenched in rains) had dinner and left to Bangalore. We were lucky enough to get seats in a Karnataka sarige bus.
This was one hell of an experience I would never forget in life, for me a risk worth taking. I will not propose this to many, but if you like some adrenaline rush, then you must try KP trek in monsoons..
PS : We could-not capture pics in all places since we did not have a waterproof camera. And the fog blurred the lens bit too often.
Below are a few pics I would like to share.....
Having previous experience of covering few difficult terrains, I just thought "so many people trek KP, whats great in that lets just do it".
Coming to my experience, being a guy who is born and brought up in Dandeli, Sahyadri, esp during monsoons, has never failed to amaze me. Last year we the green route trek, which was simply awesome. KP trek was a backup plan then, i.e. if RPF dint allow us to go ahead with the illegal Green Route trek we thought of covering KP.
Since we did not face any problem in Green Route trek, KP remained a distant dream. My roommate, Harsha started bugging me to plan this trip in summer and I told him let the pre-monsoons start, we shall plan. But when we actually traveled it was monsoons. Karthik, Harsha, Nataraj & Vinayak who were with me for Green Route trek got ready along with 1 more guy.. Without any doubt the expectations were very high..
Preparations:-
Most of the preparations were based on the reviews from travel websites and blogs. Also my roommate's friends had trekked so the inputs were taken.
I called up Bhattara Mane to intimate them that we will be coming for Lunch on Saturday. The elderly gentleman from the other side said "Tumba male untu, namma mane varige barlikke adilla, munde hattodu tumba kashta ide" which translates to "Its pouring heavily, you can come till our house, but its difficult to climb further". I replied that we will try our best.(Most of the people in my team were unaware of this conversation).
I asked my roommate to call the forest officer Jayaraj, but we couldn't reach him. Also we dint bother trying much. This Ultimately turned out to be a blunder.
The original plan was:
Sat, June 20 : Kukke to Bhattara Mane(6.5 KM) + Bhattara Mane to Kallu Mantapa (2.5 KM)
Stay overnight at/near Kallu Mantapa
Sun, June 21 : Kallu Mantapa to KP peak(5 KM) + Get down from Somavarapet Side(7 KM)
Take any bus and reach Bangalore.
As per plan we Booked seats in Kukke Shree Travels(Volvo) and reached Kukke by 8 AM. There were already hints of showers.
We freshed up, had breakfast and started our journey towards Bhattara Mane @ around 9.30 AM.
We overlooked the advise given by my roommates friends to carry at-least 2 Liters of water per person and had to face the wrath of sun. We had almost covered 3.5 or 4 KM when all of a sudden it rained heavily. Though it drenched us, it was a welcome rain for us as we had little water left with us.
One of our Nataraj was not feeling comfortable and because of that the pace was bit slow. Still we managed to reach Bhattara Mane by 12.30 PM. First thing we did there was to get rid of the leaches, which grew fat sucking our blood.
We had a shock when we heard that no overnight camping is allowed during mansoons, because of heavy winds. The second shocker was when we learned that Somavarapet side route is closed as it's too dangerous during wet conditions.(That increaded the trek by 7KM if we were to continue with our plan).
We had lunch at Bhattara mane and left to get permission from forest department (with (over)confidence that we can convince Forest officer, we carried all our luggage). It was 2.15 PM and Mr. Jayaraj straight away rejected us permission!! We tried to convince but it fell on def ears. But he assured he will leave us even by 6Am the next morning.
So we were left with no option but to bring in a drastic change to our plan,
The updated plan looked like:
Sat, June 20 : Kukke to Bhattara Mane(6.5KM)
Stay overnight at Bhattara mane
Sun, June 21 : Trek to KP peak(7.5 KM) + Get down from Kukke Side(14 KM) - Total 21.5 KM
The updated plan meant we had to cover 21.5 KM on Sunday, then travel overnight to Bangalore in an unreserved bus and work on Monday!!
Reluctantly we came back to Bhattara mane, dumped our luggage and went out to pass the time. We had dinner and slept in Bhattara mane.
That weekend there were around 8 teams(3 teams including mine stayed in Bhattara mane, while others had tents).
We met a guy Uttam(who has covered KP twice & his team was the only team, other than mine which managed to reach KP peak that weekend). He advised us not to start trek early morning because the wind speed would be too high. Also we were informed by another team that the forest after Shesha Parvatha had too many leaches and that's the reason they were not planning ahead.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sunday we got up bit late, freshened up and reached forest office at 8. I was done with the formalities & paying fees by 8.15 AM.
We started walking along the grassland. The visibility as informed by Uttam was very poor and the winds speed was too high(enough to throw us off-balance). We trekked for around 2 KM and had breakfast. Over the breakfast one of my friend(the one who was not feeling comfortable) asked me shall we return from Mantapa?
I just said, if that's what everyone want then I'm fine, but for me the plan is a complete failure and I'm gonna come back to KP soon.
That was enough to push everyone. We reached Kallu Mantapa in no time.
The next climb was the most challenging one. The winds showed no mercy & was challenging us like hell. In few places we had to hold another person to walk. There were places which were steep on one side and the wind was pushing us in exactly the same direction, we had no option but to duck down and wait for wind to decrease.
After walking 3 KM we reached Shesha Parvatha. Then we entered the forest, with the fear of leaches. But entering forest was a big relief from winds.
We walked along the water stream and for few 100 meters we had to climb in the rocky path of water stream. to reach the final rock.
There were many challenging & risky times when few of us felt quitting is the best option, but we continued. Finally we were on the top of KP.
Standing on top of KP was hell, the wind was literally tearing us.
We relaxed for some time in the water stream, had snacks and then came the thought that we have to climb down 14KM(half of that again in extreme winds). We started our journey back.
While climbing the wind was blowing from back(approx 30 degrees from back), but while climbing down it was approx 60 degrees on our face. I had to hold my roommate for at-least half a KM to save him from winds. Also the rain drops were hitting our face like bullets and we had to duck down for minutes in few places.
We climbed down pretty fast, and reached Bhattara Mane. Just picked up our luggage and started walking back to Kukke.
Once we reached Kukke we booked a room, had a shower, put on warm clothes (for whole day we were completely drenched in rains) had dinner and left to Bangalore. We were lucky enough to get seats in a Karnataka sarige bus.
This was one hell of an experience I would never forget in life, for me a risk worth taking. I will not propose this to many, but if you like some adrenaline rush, then you must try KP trek in monsoons..
PS : We could-not capture pics in all places since we did not have a waterproof camera. And the fog blurred the lens bit too often.
Below are a few pics I would like to share.....
