Let's converge to 9!
Perl 6, 41 bytes (40 chars)



{+($_,{$_%2??[+] $_².comb!!$_/2+1}...9)}


Try it online!

This uses 1-indexing of k's, so it gives 1 higher answers than the examples in OP. If this is not what the 1-indexing means, I'll have to add 1 byte more.

Explanation: It's an anonymous function. We just use the Perl 6's facility for generating lists using recursion :—). It looks like this: (first element),(block that takes the previous element and gives the next)...(end condition). In this case, the first element is $_ (argument of the main function) and the end condition is 9 (fulfilled when we generate a 9). In the middle block, we use $_ to refer to its argument ( = the previous element of the sequence). The ?? !! is the old ternary operator (better known as ? :). Finally, we take the length of this list by forcing numerical context by +(...).

The last weird thing here is the sum of digits. Numbers are Cool (behave both like strings and numbers), so we use a string method .comb on $_² (give list of characters = digits), then adding the characters up (that converts them back to numbers).