Trek to Kudremukh - Touching the face of God!

It had been a very long time since I had been on a trek. This summer was a complete bummer, with temperatures soaring in Hyderabad and surrounding areas. So after the first monsoon showers, I decided to go on a trek. With none of my friends having the time to join me, I decided to go with a professional club, and the Bangalore Mountaineering Club (BMC) was the BEST among them.

So I started a day earlier and landed in Bangalore on Friday morning, and worked that day and then joined with the BMC team leaving for Kudremukh on Friday night. We reached Kalasa and were put up in a local hotel, as the local nature camp did not allow large groups (we were 35 people). The next day morning, we reached the base of the trek at around 9:30 am, and started the trek.

Initially the trek was on a muddy road for a couple of km, and then it branched out into the forest. While waiting for others to catch up a couple of us also took a detour to a nearby waterfall with a check-dam which was beautiful. Back on the way, after crossing the first stream, I realized that there were leeches all over the place due to the incessant raining in the past few days. I have a serious fear of leeches (I looked it up and the actual term is "Bdellophobia" :), and these were really big ones at almost 4-5 cms long (without any blood i.e.), wiggling around vigorously to attach themselves to the nearest blood source. After reaching a patch of dry rock, we checked our shoes and sure enough there were 2 leeches, which were quickly removed by my teammates (thanks guys! I was really really grossed out :).

After climbing for some more time, we could see the actual peak we were about to climb. It was awesome, like a serene giant, being engulfed slowly in milky white clouds. The mountains around were majestic. After some comparatively steeper climbing, we reached the peak by 2:00 PM and relaxed there for an hour while enjoying the lunch of chapattis & chutney which our BMC contact Ram had provided.

On a nearby mountain, we could see a herd of bison, walking slowly, and it felt very exciting seeing them. On the peak, I realized that I ran out of my 2.5 litre supply of water, having misjudged the strenuousness of the climb. So, I had to drink some water from a nearby stream directly - since I did not have any iodine to purify it, but it was very pure. We started our way back down, after climbing down from the main peak, I was deep in leech territory, so I started running all the way until we were close to the mud road, which was safe from leeches.

Four of us were lost on the way back on the mud road, and reached a local village. Two local women were kind enough to lead us back to the Bus. It was almost 6:00 PM by the time we reached the bus. We went back to the lodge and the next day we went to a nearby waterfalls which were very beautiful, before starting back to Bangalore. It was almost 1AM by the time I reached my friend's place in Bangalore.

I did not carry a camera with me on this trip, so the pics from my cell are subpar, I will put up the remaining pics once the remaining team members upload their.

I was very happy with myself for completing this trek, since my strength and stamina training over the previous 5 months had paid off handsomely, with me being able to carry a lot of weight uphill without getting real tired! Hoping to do a trek sometime real soon.