Ethina bhuja and pandava hills trek in byrapura ghats

This was a one day trip to two temples and two short treks in Byrapura ghats. It included a visit to Bhairaweshwara temple and trek to nearby Ethina Bhuja hill in the first half of the day. Then in the second half we visited another temple – Bettada Byraweshwara temple and nearby hills called Pandav hills (Mekanagadde Betta).

Date – 9th December 2018

Location – Byrapura (Ethina Bhuja, Pandava hills)

Byrapura - Ethina Bhuja, Bhairaweshwara Temple, Bettada Byreswara Swamy Temple, Mekanagadde betta — Byrapura – Ethina Bhuja, Bhairaweshwara Temple, Bettada Byreswara Swamy Temple, Mekanagadde betta

Got to know about the trek organised by YHAI Udupi president Subhas Nayak from my friend. Decided to go for it and called him up and confirmed. The trip was organised for Ethina Bhuja on 9th December 2018. This was my my first trip with YHAI – Udupi.

Initially we thought we were going to Shishila and starting the trek from there. This is supposed to be a moderately difficult trek taking around 7 to 8 hours. But recently due to some issues the forest department had stopped giving permission to trek to Ethina Bhuja from Shishila. So we decided to take another route which starts from Bhairaweshwara temple in Byrapura. This is a very short and easy trek. Starting from the Bhairaweshwara temple.

Details –

We started from Udupi at around 5:45 am. Stopped in Karkala for breakfast and parcelled our lunch here. Reached Byrapura at around 11 am and stopped at Bhairaweshwara temple. The temple was closed. We could see the Ethina Bhuja peak from the temple. We started our trek at around 11:15 and reached the peak in half an hour. It was a very short trek. We clicked a few pics and walked back to the temple and had our lunch near the temple.

Since we were done with the trek early, we decided to visit another temple called Bettada Byraweshwara temple and nearby hills called Pandava hills. This is tagged as Mekanagadde Betta in google maps. We reached the temple at around 4pm and then started walking towards the nearby hills. There are 2 hills close by. We climbed the smaller peak and then the other one. Again an easy trek of around half an hour. Spent some time at the top and then walked back to temple.

We left around 5:30 pm. Stopped for tea at a hotel in Mudigere. I got down at Ujire at around 7:30 pm. I had booked Bangalore bus from Ujire. Rest of folks would have reached Udupi by 9:30 – 10pm.