Heaven on Earth.

I was woken up by a cackle of voices talking about a beautiful starry sky. I was not sure where I was. I looked around and realized I was in a cosy sleeping bag inside what seemed like a tent. As I listened to the voices outside my tent trying to guess where I was, the topic outside changed to how the rain had seeped into their tents and drove away all their much wanted sleep. I slowly recalled the events of the previous day. It had been a long tiring day. We had started our trek from the foot of the hills from a sleepy little village, Beedalli. The group of fourteen consisting of friends and friends of friends, some of whom I had met for the very first time, were attempting to climb the Kumaraparvatha, the second highest mountain peak in Karnataka. After walking along mud roads carrying our heavy backpacks and tents for almost an hour or so, we had reached the forest office. The trek had just begun, but I and a few other lazy bones were already feeling the effects of shameless lazing around, doing no hard work, post college life.



After collecting the required permissions, and a fair warning of the impending rain and misty conditions, we started the steeper part of the trek through the green forests of the Western Ghats. As we crossed streams and stretches of damp tracks that rose steeply, we began to question, "What crazy joy do we plan to get, after all this hard work. We could have easily lazed at home and watched some English movie on HBO or Star Movies?". But we did not want to wait to find out the answer, as we were busy trying to flee from the constant attack of the blood sucking leeches. As we marched on bravely, we managed to keep a good pace. (well, thats looking at the positive side. We were actually running away from the army of tiny bloody suckers.)

Some of the highlights of the ascent to the top was the amazing sights of natural beauty that we saw as we trekked across. Other highlights of our trek were the huge slippery rocks that we had to climb. We had a few acrophobiacs, like me, who could not imagine having to make the climb to the top without the safety of a nylon rope to cling to. This in spite of some of the few nimble footed trekkers in our group literally doing a ballet on those slippery surfaces trying to encourage us to climb to the top. Thanks to their effort and the safety of the rope we managed to climb that rock. But there were other huge rocky surfaces where the safety rope was not useful. All we could do was pull up our socks, gulp some glucose and start climbing the huge rock. Mid way up one huge rock surface, the clouds started moving in and it began to drizzle. If life was tough, it just got tougher. The rock surface was now getting as slippery as ice. And if you did not know ice-skating, this was not a time to learn because if you slipped from here, most likely you would never get a chance to learn. But thankfully we managed to climb up the rock surface -all fourteen of us, with the exact number of bones that we started the trek.

We continued our trek, in the drizzle, now exhausted, cold, hungry and tired. The only thing on our minds was to rest somewhere. But where ? All we could find in our path lined with thick bushes infested with leeches and God alone knew what else, were cold wet and slippery rocks. Oh ! God !!! What did I get myself into ? There could have been much better ways to spend a Saturday evening - like sitting and sipping coffee with friends or family in a coffee shop. But here I was, in the midst of nowhere, cold, hungry and tired, trying to rest my aching limbs and fighting off the urge to give it all up. We had no clue of how far we were from the top of the mountain. The mists were beginning to set in. Many of us were tired - more mentally than physically. The weight of our backpacks, the heavy tents, the lack of fitness, and the years of lazing and drinking coffee was beginning to show. It was pure adrenaline and the fear of the bloody leeches which had brought us so far. But then there is a limit to which these can work. There was no more adrenaline in our body and we now no longer cared for the leeches. We were exhausted and did not care if the leeches got their share of blood.

We reached an opening that was neither broad enough not level enough to put up all our tents. But many of us were too tired and unwilling to go any further. We wanted to pitch our tents right there and get some well deserved rest. But the more stronger among us, willed us to push on, to push our limits and attempt to reach the top. This definitely was test for the mind. Did we have it in us to push ourselves ? Or would we fall victims to exhaustion. This would differtiate the men from the boys. After a minor discussion, just as the mists began to get thicker and thicker we decided to move on. We would need to stick closer together so that we were not lost. And then, all of a sudden we heard loud hoops of joy from some of our ilk who had gone ahead as a search party. It only signalled one thing - we were almost on top, probably just a few hundred meters away. With renewed energy we trekked on and reached the top. Completely exhausted we fell in a heap. It took a while for it to sink in that we had finally made it - that we had reached the top. And once realisation dawned that we had done what we hitherto beleived was impossible, we shouted with joy, exchanged hugs and congratulated each other for the remarkable effort and camaraderie we had shown.

After sipping the sights from the top of the mountain, we had immediately set about pitching our tents, setting up a fire, heating our dinner (our only decent meal of the whole day). By the time night fell (which was pretty fast on the misty mountain top) we had a decent fire going. The fire and the warm food finally brought in some life into our jaded bodies. We lit up a campfire and warmed ourselves a bit more. However we were too tired to enjoy it for long. Soon most of us retired ourselves to the warm confines of our tents.


As I stirred in my sleeping bag, I remembered how the rains had come crashing down in the night, on our tents. Thankfully our tent was tied up quite well and the water had not rushed into our tents. I stepped out of the tent to be greeted by a strong cold morning wind. It seemed like it was going to be a cloudy morning and we would denied the sight of the beautiful sunrise. And just as we were speaking the mists cleared up.
Only then we realised how beautiful our surroundings were. We were at almost 7000ft above sea level, high above the clouds. The thick white milky clouds was spread over miles and miles of clear sky. And as we watched in bated breaths, another of nature's beautiful wonders unfolded right in front of our eyes. The sight of the crimson red sun rising above the clouds and lighting the sky was an amazing sight, probably by far the most beautiful sight of my entire life. I find myself handicapped to describe the beauty of the morning. Never in my life had I experienced something so special. And as the sun rose slowly above the clouds and chasing away the mists we cried out in awe and joy.



I now understood why everyone kept saying that "the heavens above are a beautiful place". This probably was the heaven on earth.


Soon, it was time to leave.We packed our tents, had a small breakfast, cleaned up the place, made sure we did not leave any non-bio degradable objects behind and started our trek back. We had a long day ahead of us. We planned to trek down the other side of the mountain this time. The descent from the mountain top was initally quite dangerous. We had to cross some very slippery and very steep rock surfaces. But once we managed the cross these and the thick forests the terrain changed to a series of grass covered hills.

If the previous day was cloudy and rainy at times, today the sun was beating down on us in all its glory, sapping out every drop of water we had in our lifeless bodies. After trekking for a few hours in the burning sun, we reached the "Bhattara manne" tired and exhausted far beyond the previous day.

The Bhatta provided us a simple meal of rice, sambhar, buttermilk and pickle. But that to us was like amrutham. After eating three full helpings, I had to stop myself before the bhatta threw me out of his house. But the simple meal was extremely energizing. It helped us pull along for a very long distance. After a few more hours of trekking down sometimes treacherous, sometimes winding, paths amidst thick forests we finally managed to reach the bottom of the mountain just as it was getting dark. We checked into a hotel nearby, took a much deserved bath and went to the Kukke Subramania temple and thanked Him for keeping us all safe. One more amazing trek had come to a safe end. But the memories of the trek would stay with us for a very long time.

PS: In my attempt to keep this post as short as possible, I missed out a lot of details. However one of co-trekkers has a much more descriptive post of the same trek.
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers : Prologue
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers : Preparations
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers - Day 1
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers - Day 2
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers - Epilogue
Kumaraparvatha and the 14 trekkers - Me's Thoughts!

Most pictures in this post are courtesy my co-trekkers Radhakrishna and Eshwar. Thanks Guys. Those were wonderful pictures.