A long overdue post drafted on 10th oct 2008, but unfunished on account of various reasons like lack of interest. I signed into my blog account after eons to find this piece. I thought a magnificient trip like this one definitely deserved a mention in my pages. So here goes..

This blog is an effort to capture the result of an experiment of undertaking a trekking journey with very little planning, very little time to plan and strictly an late-evening-friday-ish plan with arbit people( some of whom still think sleeping mat is a sofa sponge). This is definitely not a substitue for the beautifully written blogs about meticulous preparation and execution. And I would advise people not to try things mentioned here.
"Bear grylls is to be watched - not to be likened to..posthumously, usually" -- J

It began on a Tuesday when Ananda called from office telling he was bored and would like to head out for a trek during the weekend. Jayanth(jayyu), Ganesh(jinx), Rajendra(raji), Sandesh(sandy) were also ready. But nobody had decided the venue till friday evening, and we decided that Kumara paravata it is after not much discussion. I had been there once during college.

Whenever I want to go out on a trek, I look up the place on the internet to just read what people have to say about the place. I just realised that I read on, I keep looking mostly for vital details. More often, it happens that I do spend substantial amount of time reading various posts , finding out things and then arriving at an itenary. But for late planners, and esp those who get urge to trek on friday evenings, this is a luxury. So, we head out with only essential details, no frills attached . We planned to catch the rest on the way or by experience.We caught the last rajahamsa heading towards subrahmanya. It was a 10.30 bus. We reached subramanya very early at around 4.30 when no hotels/lodges were open. We needed to freshen up. We tried a few lodges, but they were full owing to some auspicious day. So we came back to the bus-station where toilets were locked. We woke up somebody in-charge to open it, he cursingly did it. By the time, we were ready, it was daybreak and the bustling little town was in motion. We had a generous helping of idly, vada and dosa in one of the local hotels there. We started walking along a small road that leads to the foot of the hill. Then I caught sight of green sponges sticking out of jinx and rajendra's bags. I had not given much thought when I had asked them to purchase sleeping mats on the way and they had purchased sponges that one puts inside sofa upholstery. I realised it was my mistake, but we decided to improvise with it. And another problem was, we did not get tents and weather seemed to be breezy and with imminent rain. But we decided to go ahead. A small dog accompanied us to the woods. The cook's house was the first destination. As we started, we saw a local carrying a can of milk to the bhatr mane. We spoke to him. It was his everyday chore -fetching milk from the town and delivering it to the bhatru. I noticed he was barefoot. Asked about the time to reach the bhatr mane, he sized us up, and said three hours - we were definitely not in top physical form. He would do it in an hour, he said. Our journey continued, all along I was thinking about why one(Bhatru) should settle in a small hut in the woods, why he should serve weary travellers, why... Was he a Phantom-the ghost who walks? why? - Was I just about to find out?


We reached there almost at the same time as predicted by the milk delivery boy. It was humid, but the shade of the hut with its portico littered with betel nut husk was a nice place to have our breakfast. The bhatr made us upma - lots of it. Normally, I would never touch upma unless I would die of hunger. But then, I did not want to spoil the mood of the trip. After generous helpings and refilling water bottles, we fed our dog with goodlife milk - one full packet. We bid farewell to the Bhatr, letting him know that we might return in case we decided to head back the same way we came. A two minute walk from there brings us the forest department office - a guard who I remember from last time. He took the mandatory trekking charges from us (last time around, in aug 2005, there was no charge, but he had extorted money from us). This time again, he billed for one camera(we had three), and pocketed the fee for the other two. He had some things negative to say about the Bhatr, which I find irrelevant to this blog. We trudged along, our dog alerting when we were near a snake. We sighted two but weren't fast enough to pull out the camera and shoot it. The terrain was punishing and the difficulty level constantly increased. All through the ascent to the 'Mantapa', the forest outpost will always be in sight. Mantapa is a four pillared stone structure near one of the two water sources of the entire trek.

We stopped there for a while and resumed to pushpagiri which is an intermediate peak before the final destination. Atop, we had lunch - bread, milk, oranges. From my experience in 2005, I had rated this the most tiring and dangerous part of the entire ascent. We had to descend slightly into the forest(very dense) and then climb an almost vertical rock face littered with small waterfalls and slippery moss. The weather brewed a nice drizzle with fog and visibility reduced to around 20 feet. We managed it and made it to the last of the slopes. This place is infested with cobras. We were lucky to see the molted skin of a cobra. Lots of elephant dung was strewn around. We reached the top around at 5'0 clock, by which time the rain was quite annoying. We had no idea of how to see through the night. Various plans were hatched, but finally we made a makeshift tent out of the burlap bag which housed the sponge sleeping mat. We called it the 35 rupees tent ( The guys had paid 35 for the burlap bag). It was genuine engineering - the sack was able to shelter our bags, and our bodies, from head to torso. From waist down, we were at the mercy of the elements. We kept the sponges on the uneven rocks as the flooring material - bad idea. We got a fire going, but nobody was in mood to cook. We had avalakki mixture, biscuits and chikkis. We squeezed inside the small place and rajendra immediately slept off. We were just joking around. The sponges we slowly getting wet. The rain started increasing. Within fifteen minutes, we were all sleeping on wet sponges, and were being lashed about by the rain water. But we slept in the rain and I woke up next to the dog. The dawn was chilly and misty, rain had died down. This phase gave us the best photos of the entire trip. The sun came up dazzling and all signs of rain were removed quickly. We had breakfast of noodles and started the descent towards Mallalli,coorg.
I realised I was wrong when we started descending. It was steep and rugged. In many places, we had to slide down on rocks and we got many bruises. In my opinion, it would be really difficult to descend along this route during the peak of the rainy season. The best part was the dog was guiding us whenever we lost way. Sometimes, he would wander off chasing birds and sounds. But would return everytime. We encountered many people ascending from this side of the peak. Leeches were everywhere - after a while we stopped caring about them. The forest department had installed dustbins at quite a few places. Our sponge sleeping mats finally found resting place in one of them. The forest started thinning. We could see a creek with a bridge. We were almost at the end of our journey. We rested along the pebbly banks, washed our legs and had silent moments. We noticed that our dog had lot of leech bites. Trudging along we came to the road. At that point, we were relieved to find out that we had not missed the bus. We dropped our plans to visit Malalli falls nearby since we did not find any means of transport and were very tired. We waited for an hour for the bus. We had to leave the dog back. It followed our bus for some distance before accepting reality. But we were reassured that it would find a way back to Subramanya with groups who climb the peak starting from Mallalli.
Civilization started. A beautiful trip came to an end.