Finally the day had come!!
It has been almost a month since Gow had put forward the plan for a trekking trip. It was the Himalayas that we wanted to go to, and as per the initial “googling “ the only feasible one looked to be the Gomukh – Tapovan trek. But it would take more than 10 days for the whole thing. 10 Days!!! Since all of us were working for different companies and in different cities, getting these 10 days of leave and that too on the same dates was one impossible task. If we were capable of doing such huge things, we would have planned to climb Mt.Evereset in the first place.
So, many phone calls, mails and chat sessions later we decided that it’s time to put Plan B into action, which will be to some place not so far and which can be completed in about four days..And hence came into picture the great Kumara Parvata a.k.a Pushpagiri the 3rd highest in Karnataka , which was first suggested by Surjith, who unfortunately could not even complete the first task itself ..Getting leave.
Gow believes in doing big things and to do big things you should start big, probably that’s why he decided to start his trekking career form the Himalayas and was not at all happy with our plan to go trek the KP (Kumara Parvata) which is very small compared to the mountains in the Himalayas. Surjith, although was not planning to come with us, did most of the initial information gathering. He had sent me quite a few links to blogs of people who had already been there. I forwarded those to others. Inputs and ideas had started to pour in from Sooraj who initially used to say “You guys plan everything, I’ll join you”. Next day, Gow informed us that Basil is also in for the trek and Rags who calls himself “work boozer” because he believes workaholic is not a word enough to describe him, has dropped out due to obvious reasons!! Now we were four of us (Gow, Basil, Sooraj and Joe). Next week was all planning, booking tickets, shopping and whole lot of excitement….For us the trip to KP had already begun.
8th Oct 2008, I had just started packing my bag when it started raining heavily outside. Sooraj had booked two bus tickets from Hyderabad to Bangalore and the bus was at 8:30pm. I was afraid I’d miss the bus if I went to have dinner and since I knew that traffic will be a mess once it rains in Hyderabad. A call to Sooraj made sure that I got two sandwiches waiting for me in the bus when I boarded it. The bus was on its way out of Hyderabad by about 9:30pm. I needed to sleep because I knew the next two days are going to be hectic.
Bangalore (I know it has changed its name, but I still like this one) was just waking up when we reached there. We woke up Gow to come and pick us up from the bus stop. After some of his usual cursing he agreed and was already waiting when we got out of the bus. One thing I love about Bangalore is that there are a lot of Kerala Restaurants and first thing I wanted to do was to go and munch on some good food. Our KSRTC bus tickets to Somwarepet were already booked online by Gow and the bus was at 11:00pm.
Gow and Basil went to collect the tent and sleeping bag from WildCraft showroom, while Sooraj and I went shopping for some food and other things that we needed to carry. Bread, cheese, bananas, salt (for the leeches), tissues, knife, torch, lighter, glucose and the list went on. By 7 O’clock we were all back in our room with what we thought was all that we required for the trip. Dividing and deciding who would be carrying what was all taken care by Sooraj and Gow. Rags came home from work by 8:15pm and brought dinner for us. That dinner, as I’ll explain later, changed the course of our trek. By 9:30pm we were all set and the first photo was taken just before we started off to Majestic to catch the 11 O’clock bus to Somwarpet!!!
