Trek to Kumara Parvatha

Myself, Babu, pradeep, naveen, Vijay, Bala, raghu, naveen and Irfan started off for KP trekking on 25th night. We reached Kukke Subramanya(KS) at 5: 30 AM on 26th and immediately headed to a lodge which babu had booked. KS was very crowded as it was the holiday season. We finished our morning activities, took bath in the river and reached our trekking base point by 10:00 AM. We started trekking from the base point at 10:15 AM. Seeing the trek route Pradeep was surprised and frightened as it was his first trek. He had expected a nice straight route …



Journey to Battara Mane(GiriGadde):
Gunda (Raghu) was very slow as he was carrying heavy load which included 5 pairs of clothes(!!!!) myself, babu and naveen were with gunda which reduced our pace. The rest of the crew reached Battara mane by 2:30 PM. We managed to reach battara mane by 3:30 PM. This stretch of 7 km is very strenuous. The day was sunny which made the trek
much difficult. The scenic beauty on the way was too good!



Heading towards Mantapa:
We had a very good lunch at battara mane and started off towards mantapa at around 4:40 PM. We had to request the forest officials as it was already late. So after 10 min of intense discussion with the forest officials we paid the money and headed towards Mantapa. It will usually get dark by around 6:30 PM so we had limited time to reach Mantapa … we started at 5:00 PM from the forest office and this time our pace was good. In one hour we reached Mantapa…on the way I got to capture good pics of sunset …







once we reached Mantapa, we started to put up tent.
Adventurous Night out:
We wasted around 20 min in discussing the place to put-up the tent ( :o ) … so by the time we decided the place, it was 6:20 PM and the light slowly started to fade away … we had 3 tents and we had chosen sloppy region!!!
We finished with two tents and we were putting up the third tent and it started drizzling!!!
And heavy rains started immediately …
We were still not done with our third tent and it started to rain heavily. We didn’t have any chance but to head towards our two tents leaving the third tent half done!!
We were 9 ppl and there were only 2 tents  … in my tent we were 5 and in the other tent 4 ppl.
At around 8:30 PM, water started coming inside the tent …  we were fully wet and we had to stay in the tent no matter what! We spent the entire night inside the tent in the water … Naveen was a bit nervous as it was raining with thunder storms … Babu was afraid all night thinking he caught up with cold and fever!! The sound of thunder storm was really good to hear I must say  …. We were lucky that the wind was not much .. Otherwise our tents would have taken a blow ….

Morning we packed the tents and started our trekking … Naveen, Gunda and Pradeep decided to go back to the battara mane as they were fully tired … so we remaining 7 guys started our journey to KP top.

Trek to the KP Peak:
The scenic beauty at mantapa in the morning mist was really good … water droplets on the leaves, hills covered by clouds … and the cloud movement… it was marvelous. Each time some clouds moved on us, there used to be some rain and once the clouds were off the rains used to stop  … it is just nature at its best…







The journey from mantapa was a bit easy compared to the first 7 km to the battara mane. We have to cross approximately four peaks before reaching the KP top. The path is a zigzag path through the hills. Between we got to see really good scenic beauty. At around 10:15 AM we started the trek from the mantapa and at around 12:30 we reached Sesha Parvatha(SP). This is the peak before Kumara Parvatha peak. By heights, I think SP is at a higher altitude compared to KP. From SP, we head to a thick forest, which is just like a rain forest. Full of green and moist ...




After this green patch, we will encounter a brief distance to be covered which is very steep and is full of rocks. After this comes a big rock, which we need to climb and is quite dangerous for the first timers as it is slippery!!





Once this rock is passed, we are almost at the top. Just another 15 min trek is all required … We reached the KP top at around 1:15 PM … oh the joy of being at the top if KP was marvelous … I fell in love with the place and the scenic beauty there!!! No comparisions to the nature there … There is a small cave like structure which contains Shiva Linga.





We had food, took some snaps and after enjoying the sceneries, we started to descend from the KP peat at around 1:45 PM. The descent was in a good pace. We reached back to mantapa at around 3:15 PM and battara mane by 4:15 PM. We had lunch in battara mane and decided to stay back as it was getting dark and also it started to rain. But irfan left on the same day to Kukke with another group as he had booked bus tickets on Sunday night.
Bhattru arranged for our night stay and also the night dinner. Morning, we thanked bhattaru for his help and started at 7:30 AM from battara mane and we descended towards kukke. We finally reached kukke by 10:00 AM exactly 48 hours after starting the trek 
This trek was one of the most exciting treks of mine … compared to Kodachaadri trek it was equally good. Hope to make it to the KP top once again in near future 
You can see my photos at link http://picasaweb.google.com/mail2vinay.bs/KumaraParvathaPics
Statistics: KP overall trek distance from Kukke – KP – Kukke : 36 KM. (18KM from kukke to KP peak)
Distance to BattaraMane or Girigadde : 7 KM
So if planning for this trek best time is from November to Feb as it will be cold and rains will not be there.