Night Trek to Kaurav Kunda

I am Vinayak Surve, a Veterinarian from Mumbai. My childhood and teenage life is spent in Sahyadri, Konkan region, Ratnagiri District of Maharashtra. Naturally, I have some experience of crossing hills, rivers, forest and different challenging trails.

Preparations:

Thought about going to Kaurava Kunda trek was exciting to me because it was my first trek with experienced trekking group where I was supposed to meet new friends with great interest in trekking. I received an email from Patrick (organizer) and rushed to buy trekking tools and gears like wind jacket, sleeping bag, torch, snacks, etc. Sharing this pre-trekking excitement was great fun with friends, family, colleagues and everyone whom I met during that week.

Saturday, 09.08.2014

8.28 pm
Reached the meeting point. Started early from Electronic city to reach Majestic before time and have dinner near assembly point. Suman and Niloy joined me within 2 minutes as I reached at assembly point. We identified each other as "Bangalore Ascenders" by looking at attire and bags. All were full on trekking mood. Total 15 members joined by 8.45 pm. Introductions and handshakes happened as members arrived one by one. It was a good number of trekkers to have fun trails at Kaurava Kunda.

9.30 pm
All members boarded in a bus to Chikkaballapur. 2 more members joined us in bus. All cheered for them as they boarded in. Bus started at 9.30 pm sharp. I had good chat with Arvind while traveling towards our destination.

11.00 pm
The bus dropped us at Chikkaballapur. Patrick appointed a sweeper. It was new word for me in the trekking scenario. Sweeper is an appointed member who will always stay behind and ensure no one slips behind from the group and motivates the lagging members to walk fast, cover up and stay with the group. We started walking towards the Kaurava Kunda hill. It was bright night of "Rakhi Pournima" with full moon. We walked approx. 5 km to touch the base of hill. We had formal introduction meet at the bus stop near base village.

3 biscuit loving dogs joined us as we started climbing the hill. Dogs detected the Karachi biscuits kept in the bag of one of the member. The Karachi biscuits were saved for eating at camp by handing over to other members.

Sunday, 10-08-2014

1.40 am
Group reached the Kaurava Kunda peak. Patrick advised us to camp at the windy plateau near the peaks. We enjoyed the treat of hard saved Karachi biscuits at camping area. It was a chilling windy night. We decided to collect dry wood to create fire and have chat around it. I spotted a green snake while collecting wood and alerted other members to be careful while searching the wood. The fire was impossible because of crazy winds and wet woods. We dropped that idea after several attempts to light the fire.

2.30 am
We assembled for group photographs and had fun in mid night while taking photographs. All were tired after the 90 minutes of travel by bus, 5 kms of walk and 90 minutes of climbing hill. We decided to sleep. We scattered on plateau to find less windy & flat places to sleep.

5.40 am
When I woke up, I saw half of the group climbing towards the peak. I packed my sleeping bag, got ready for climbing and started towards the highest point. We reached the peak within 15-20 minutes. Winds and clouds were rushing with speed on the peak. It was awesome feeling. With those speedy winds and fast moving clouds, I felt like I was flying in the open aircraft. We took many photographs with different poses, time and places. We couldn't see the sunrise because of the clouds. We complained about this to Patrick that he didn't mark CC of his email to Sun :) who was unaware of our arrival.

We had some cakes for breakfast at camping area and started descending through a different route. After tiny treat of cakes, we assembled for group photograph at camping area. Jinu managed for all members snap by setting timer in his camera. It was fixed with bags and stones to capture all the members in a single frame. We headed towards Shiva temple at the base then towards Chikkaballapur. We had fun and some more clicks at the water pond while walking towards temple.

9.00 am
We reached Chikkaballapur and had breakfast again voraciously at nearby hotel. We got the bus to Majestic and slept in the bus like 'Kumbhakarna'. Time was 11.30 am when Arvind woke me up at Majestic. We had parting meet where Patrick told all to share the photographs and experiences about trek by email. I boarded in a bus to Electronic city along with Niloy. Yes, we learnt while trekking that we both are from Electronic city :) That’s the beauty of trek, you get some more friends while doing your dearest activity.

Thanks to Bangalore Ascenders and Patrick for organizing such a wonderful trek. I will be looking for such fun in future with Bangalore Ascenders.

Written by: Vinayak Surve

Join Bangalore ASCENDers @ CLICK HERE
Date: 9th & 10th August, 2014
Composed by: Swetha Padakandla
Event organized by: Patrick Samuel
Expenses per head: Rs. 120
Image Gallery: Suman, Niloy, Rashmi, Shreeharsha Aithal
The team : Deepa, Sathya baarathi, Pragati, Shamanth, Sreeharsha Aithal M, John, Surya Vanamali, Akshar Kowlani, Anvesh reddy, Rashmi, Arvind, Suman, Vinayak Surve, Niloy Das, Sandeep, Vidya, Patrick Samuel