Kunti Betta Trek
I recently joined BTC after learning about the adventurous trek conducted by them on the BTC’s official website, and then started waiting for a good trek to start with BTC. One fine day I saw the mail from Sangamesh with a question… “are you waiting for a day trek” and I shouted inside myself yes yes …
It was the trek to Kunti Betta in Pandavapura, this place is not an ordinary location like other trekking spots, it was here the Pandavas ended their exile. I was extremely excited that I have an opportunity not only to trek but also to visit an historic religious place. Without wasting any time I called my friend(Chandra Babu - who was also waiting for a good trekking event) whether he would like to join this trek, he was also equally excited like me and we both registered immediately. Then came the mail from Sangamesh after 5 long days with the list of participants and we were happy to see our name in it(though there was a small typo in my name).
On the day of trek, in this cold weather I packed my backpack and started from my home at 5:45am. I picked up my friend at his home, then parked my bike in Majestic and reached the mentioned location exactly at 6:40am and quickly everyone started showing up. By 7:00 am everyone reached and we were waiting for only one person and that is Sunitha Raul. Well we weren't waiting for long… we just waited for an hour.
With all set, our journey begins… to the historic place. After an hour of journey we crossed the border of this busy city and halted for breakfast on a road side hotel on Mysore Road. That place seems to be well-known for “Thattu idli”, the options for breakfast were Thatte idli, lemon rice and pulihogira. I never tasted Thatte idli, so I decided to go for it and so do many of us. It was super soft and served with butter. After filling our tummy, Sangamesh distributed us the parcel containing lemon rice and puliohara for lunch. One parcel per person, based on your luck you get either lemon rice or puliohara.
We then continued our journey, until now we were all strangers with very little communication and enjoying the music played by our DJ(Murali). The fun time starts now with Sribacha taking out his Guessing game cards. We all enjoyed playing it, with lot of fun helping each other with clues and guess what… the most important clue for guessing was “woh uska chotta bhai”, “woh uska bada bhai”, and all other flavors of it. We were playing this game with so much enthusiasm that it took more than 2 hours to reach Pandavapura and we didn’t realized that.
After boarding off from our cab, we formed a circle and had a small introduction talk. The stairs leading to a temple marked the beginning of our trek. For a moment I thought it might be an easy trek but very soon I was proved wrong. On reaching the temple everyone started taking pics using their smartphones and camera. I recently purchased Nexus 5 and just couple of days before the trek I received 4.4.2 kit-kat upgrade for improvising the camera. I thought it would be a good test for my phone to take some HDR photos in this trek and I was happy with the results.
After crossing the temple there was a very steep rock which leads to the ultimate peak of the Kunti hill, it was so steep that people play slide game on it, without proper grip on your shoes you go all the way sliding down. Reaching the top of this sliding rock wasn't the end of hard part, we then came across this challenging rock, which made some of them to crawl underneath another alternative route to cross over it. It may not look that much tough from this perspective but trust me, it was really difficult… and that too for beginners it would definitely be so.
On the alternate route across this rock Mayuresh ran a thorn on his thumb, but fear not we have swiss army knife to remove it and Sangamesh has a first aid kit for unforeseen victims. It is then time for small refreshment, we had energy drink and took some random clicks. We then continued our journey to conquer the peak, and shortly Sanjoy’s slipper was torn. We suggested him to take rest, since walking on bare foot in harsh environment filled with gravels, thorns, slopes and slippery surface is nothing less than an impossible task but he was an adamant man and decided not to accept the defeat. He continued with bare foot and used his slipper mended with a safety pin occasionally to cross the most demanding surfaces.
We were ascending this hill at a phenomenal rate, but it seems like the peak was growing taller and taller as we approach. See the pic with red mark in it showing the pillar on the top of this hill. The sun was scorching us, with almost no shade we were running out of water and became very tired. Around 1:30pm we found a place with some shade, and we decided to have our lunch here. Everyone was eager to know what was there in their lucky parcels and who will get the Puliohara. We enjoyed our meal and were taking rest for a brief amount of time before starting our journey to conquer the never ending peak of this hill. We took few steps and after a small climb… surprise we are at the peak of Kunti hills… Everyone rejoiced by that fact and started posing for pics around the pillar which marks the ultimate summit of this hill.
After enjoying our victory we took some group photos on this summit and started our journey back to the starting point. Throughout this journey we were all attracted by the nearby lake and the extraordinary beauty of this village. So, ubiquitously we all decided to visit the lake before leaving this beautiful village. On our way back, we discovered a cave which looks like an inhabited place long ago… who knows it might be the house of Pandavas during their stay in Pandavapura. This was a surprise bonus on our journey, after taking some pics we continued our descend.
It was all fun throughout this trek, and the same challenging rock gave us more humorous moments. On reaching the starting point everyone ran towards the tap for quenching our thirst though it haven’t tasted great, it was an elixir at that moment. Then we boarded the cab and started the journey to the lake that attracted us.
In the quest of this lake we crossed a historic Vishnu(Rangarajan) temple, we decided to visit this temple before we start our journey back to Bangalore. We worshiped the lord and took some time for leisure again. After a day of immense fun and enjoyment we started back to Bangalore to resume our busy life with wonderful moments of joy in our heart.
Written By : Balachander Ganesan
Organized By : Sangamesh I
Date of event : 15th Dec'13
Members Count: 11
Place : Mandya
Pictures : BTC FB Page
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