Mullayanagiri Trek: Karnataka's Highest Peak

The Mullayanagiri trek climbs to the highest point in Karnataka — a grassy summit of about 1,930 m in the Baba Budan range, a short drive from Chikmagalur town. It is one of the most approachable big-view walks in the Western Ghats: a narrow ghat road carries you most of the way up, then a stepped path finishes the climb to a small Shiva shrine on the very top. That mix of a drive-to-base and a short, steep final stretch is why the peak draws everyone from casual sunrise-seekers to weekend trekkers.

What Mullayanagiri is

Mullayanagiri (also written Mullayyanagiri) is the highest peak in Karnataka, rising to about 1,930 m — some sources give 1,925 m — in the Chandra Drona or Baba Budan range of the Western Ghats. The name comes from a small shrine at the summit dedicated to the sage Mullappa Swamy, who is said to have meditated in a cave just below the top. From town the peak reads as a long, rolling grassland ridge rather than a sharp cone, and it shares its crest with the sacred Baba Budan hills just to the north.

The summit itself is open and windswept — a whitewashed Shiva shrine, a trig point, and a 360-degree sweep over grassland peaks, coffee estates and, on clear mornings, a sea of cloud filling the valleys below. Because the road runs so high, you gain the view for relatively little effort, which is both the appeal and the reason the top can feel crowded on weekends.

The routes

The short stepped climb

The standard way up is short. A motorable ghat road climbs from Chikmagalur to a saddle just below the summit, where there is parking and a cluster of stalls. From there a concrete stepped path — on the order of 450 to 500 steps — leads up the final grassy slope to the shrine. Most people manage it in a slow half-hour, pausing for the widening view. It is steep enough to leave you breathing hard, and the top is exposed to wind, but there is no route-finding or scrambling involved.

The Sarpadhari ridge walk

For a longer day on foot, trekkers walk the ridge rather than drive to the base. A common line follows the Baba Budan crest from the Sarpadhari saddle — the pass on the road between Mullayanagiri and the Baba Budangiri shrine — undulating along open grassland with the peak ahead of you the whole way. This turns a ten-minute stair climb into a proper few-hour ridge trek with far better solitude. The grassland is unshaded and there is little water on the ridge, so carry your own and start early. If you are pairing the two, the shrine end of the ridge sits at Baba Budangiri, the coffee-origin range with its shared Dattatreya cave shrine.

Views and sunrise

Sunrise is the classic reason to be here. On a clear post-monsoon morning the valleys below fill with cloud and the sun comes up over a horizon of rolling Ghats, with Baba Budangiri and the distant Kudremukh range in view. Because the summit faces open sky on every side, sunset is fine too, though the light fades fast and the drive down a single-lane road in the dark is slower. The trade-off with sunrise is company: the road-head and the steps can be busy, especially on weekends and holidays, so an early, mid-week start rewards you with both clearer air and more room. The top is genuinely cold and windy at dawn even in the dry season — a windproof layer is worth carrying. The full detail on the summit sits on the Mullayanagiri place page.

Combining with Baba Budangiri and Bhadra

Mullayanagiri slots neatly into a wider Chikmagalur loop. The obvious pairing is Baba Budangiri, a short drive further along the same range, where the Dattatreya cave shrine and the thin, sacred Manikyadhara falls make a natural half-day add-on to the summit. Many visitors do the peak at sunrise and the shrine and falls afterwards. If you have more time and want wildlife rather than more ridge-walking, the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary is a tiger reserve on the Bhadra river around Muthodi, with jeep safaris from the Muthodi range. It works well as a separate morning within a two- or three-day coffee-country trip based in town.

Getting there

The trailhead is about 22 km from Chikmagalur town, up a narrow, winding ghat road that is best driven in your own vehicle or a hired taxi; there is no convenient public transport to the road-head. Chikmagalur itself is roughly 245 km from Bengaluru (five to six hours by road via Hassan and Kadur) and about 150 km from Mangaluru; the nearest railheads are Kadur and Birur junctions. Time the drive up for early morning both for the light and to avoid meeting oncoming traffic on the single lane, and remember the summit is cold and exposed even when town is warm.

For most visitors Mullayanagiri is a half-day: an early drive up the ghat, a short breathless climb to the shrine, and a long look over the Western Ghats before the road fills up. Pair it with Baba Budangiri or a coffee-estate stay and it becomes the centrepiece of a Chikmagalur trip — see guide:things-to-do-in-chikmagalur for the rest of the district, and guide:kudremukh-trek if you want a longer, permit-controlled Ghats trek to follow.