A Trek to Kukke Subramanya (PART ONE)

When Kuchela sent out a mail about trekking to Kumara Parvatha, I was thinking “why don’t I give a try once”. I could not take chance as I have lower back pain due to an accident happened few years ago. Though Kalai, my TL warned me about it as it was too steep, I was ready to take a chance and nominated myself.

Then after 2 days Kuchela sent another mail mentioning that the gymming is compulsory as it requires lots of energy. As always I stopped going gym n started for walking early in the morning with few kilos on my back… Sometimes I used to carry nearly 6 KGs and go for the walk for KMs together.

All set to ready and the D-Day came. It was on 10th of Nov. and plan was like this:

• Aboard Rajahamsa on 10th night;
• Reach Kukke Subrahmanya on 11th Morning;
• After darshanam and little breakfast, start trekking n reach the same day the peak;
• Return journey on 12th…
  

You know we are Indians and nothing will workout as per our plans.. Initially 18 people registered and finally 16 people boarded the bus @ 22:30 on Friday.. Man, everyone was so enthusiast and curious to reach Kukke. We got into the bus. Kuchela, Madhu, Govinda were kind enough to get us some eatables like Sweet Avalakki, Khara Avalakki, Chapathi, Oranges, Apples, Water bottles, Energy drink ;-) and not to mention the tents to sleep also… Too good the arrangement was.

We reached Kukke @ 06:15 AM on Saturday and after taking bath went for the Darshanam. Wow!!! Though it was Saturday, there was not much crowd at all and we got very good darshanam, and everyone prayed for the success of the trekking. And later we had mast Idly, Vada and South Canara special Buns… Yum it was and we started our trekking around 10:00 AM.

Already the sun was on our head and it was scorching heat. But that did not let us down a bit. Couple of slow starters were there in our team and add to that I did not take the Trekking bag instead I had traveling kit with 3 pairs of dress… :-)). Kuchela was laughing at me saying “Man, are you coming for a trekking or to stay in your in-law’s house…” But he was kind enough to share my luggage. And I carried his trekking kit loading my stuff n he had my kit.

Finally we started the trekking after taking the snaps with our exuberance filled faces. Not yet we completed 200 mts, Srikanta started cribbing, “Hey it’s too steep”. Sahoo added his tune too and unfortunately for him his muscle got strangling. So we started our own First-Aid, applying Move spray n massaging and started moving ahead… We had to be little careful about our sweet social workers (Leach) who just sticks to your body n suck blood. Badrish was the first one to notice a Leach on his shoe… Okay, we heralded a war against them attacking that poor leach with our latest missiles like Salt water in a sprinkler, Turmeric Powder, n what not…Poor chap it accepted the defeat n hugged a soldier’s death.

Then we again started climbing the difficult path filled with stones, bushes, n not to mention the Leaches and not even we climbed half a KM, we were tired. The luggage we were carrying made us exhausted. So we got down n had little glucose n orange… & that was the time for cracking some jokes, songs, and photo session… Madhu, Kuchela had their mobile enabled with Camera. Srikanta, Sahoo and myself had digi-cam. After some photo session, we started again and this time we decided not to take a break for atleast another one KM. We thought its easy but very soon we realized that its not that easy as said. We had to take breaks every now and then and rejuvenate ourselves. There was a big rock and we took a very long break there for more than 30 mins and it was time for us to eat something (Ofcourse during every break we used to consume fruits, water and glucose). I took the charge of chopping n cutting the Pine-apple and so stylish I was that I chopped half of the upper skin and every one shouted at me. Next turn is Aditya’s. He was like my younger bro in this regard. He too chopped more or less like me and finally everybody had their share… Yo!!! There was a leach on Srinivasa’s shoe and after killing it, I was wondering why I am not yet attacked (May be due to my skin colour, I was laughing @ myself) and then accidentally saw my wrist. Ayyo, it is already sucking my hopeless (O +ve) blood. BTW, someone told me that leach sucking our blood is good as its going to suck only the bad blood (i.e unwanted). I wonder how they distinguish between good blood n bad blood. Any way, I attacked and got rid of it.

End of Part ONE