Trekking experience at Kunti Betta

A wonderful trekking experience at Kunti Betta (Pandavapura)

I love traveling a lot and love exploring nature all alone. But when you have some of your close friends around, it becomes even more special, particularly for an activity like Trekking you need few around you to cheer up and bring all the fun you need.

This is my first post as a Traveler, so apologize in advance if there is any mistake with the short information I provide here as my motive is to put together some information that might be helpful to anyone in future.

I have been to trekking before, with my friends in native during our School and College days, but it has been so long since we had done one. So this time around we planned to try one around Bengaluru and my friend Ravi Shankar took the initiative to book for a Night trekking at Kunti Betta, though WanderTrails.com.

Kunti Betta (Pandavapura) is located around 125 kilometres from Bengaluru in the Bengaluru – Mysore Highway. The trek to the hilltop, which is at an elevation of 2882 meters is not a long one, but the night trip makes it a bit harder to climb the distance of around 2kms. Being a new place and trekking after a long long time I found it very difficult in the initial period of the trip, but everything got better as we started moving up.

The trip usually starts from Bengaluru, where people are picked up from different points from 09:30PM onwards and we were 23 people in total in the private vehicle arranged by the organizers. Me along with my friends Ravi Shankar, Manikandan and Srinithi as a team and the other 19 have comes as 2 groups as well. The vehicle reached Ramnagara campsite around 12.30AM where we had a short break to freshen up ourselves and have some tea as well. Make sure you have a Tea by that time as you won’t have a chance for a cup of tea till next morning!

The organizers also made sure to pack couple of Boats at the top of the van and also some Life Jackets for the trip and our guide also joined us from that location. Around 2AM we reached the Kunti Betta base camp and we started walking with each one holding a stick that we could later use for campfire.

As I mentioned earlier it was very hard for the first few minutes for me as I struggled to climb up, but after 15-20mins everything became normal and exciting. You definitely need the help of a Torch to walk through as the path is full of ups and downs all through the entire distance. There are occasions where you would have to bend yourself to avoid getting hit from the rock and situations where you would have to shrink yourself between the path to move forward. If you are a first timer, be prepared to get few hits on your legs or to slip down few times, but I am pretty sure it is going to be exciting when you have friends around to make it all fun and make it look so easy.

We witnessed another group of trekking team that has already climbed up and set camp fire around them and while we thought it is where we are going to settle down, our guide took us even further higher to the top of the hills. Around 4am, we reached the destination and once you reached that height you are going to be thrilled with the night view of the mountain and its surroundings. Our team too set camp fire as 2 teams and we spent sometime around it and then settled at the best spot where we can witness Sunrise in next few hours. As the time was getting close to Sunrise few other teams arrived to the spot to capture those great moments of Sunrise. But due to heavy fog around, we could witness the sunrise only after few minutes time after it has really happened. Everyone started capturing those selfies and group photos for next 15mins and after that we started moving down around 6.45am.

This time the guide took us through a bit easy path to make sure the landing was bit easier. But being day time it was very easy comparing to the struggles we had earlier in the night. We came down to our vehicle around 8am and moved to a Lake nearby and we spent sometime in Kayaking activity, where 2 can take a boat for a ride at once. Our team had 2 boats, so 4 could complete a short round in the lake and come back for a short fun activity in the morning.

And it is breakfast time finally and we had a wonderful breakfast at Pandavapura Hotel and finally reached Bengaluru around 2pm.

If this is the first time you are planning for trekking, you are definitely going to love it and for frequent trekkers this is going to be another fun experience!

Important Things to Carry:

• Backpack
• Water Bottles – Atleast 2litres of water per person could be helpful
• Snacks or Energy Food – Good to have some snacks or energy food to feed yourself once you settle down at the top
• Personal Medication
• Sweaters or Jackets
• Trekking or Sports Shoes
• Flashlight or Torch in full charge

Package Price: Starting From 1,300-INR per adult

Special Note:
It is better to go with the help of a guide and our guide Nagesh Gowda was quiet friendly and amazing with his guidance and support all through the trip. Our Van driver too did a wonderful job with his friendly support where needed and this is going to be a real fun trip only when you have bunch of people around!