Merthi Betta

Merthi Betta was always on my mind it had a strange kind of attraction, I had seen this mountain when I had gone to visit my friend in ‘Kallugudda’ four years back and we had trekked to Hornadu from his place and I had seen this majestic mountain, we decided to go to this place on our next trek unfortunately due to lot of disturbances in this area we couldn't make it.

January 2007 our Udupi YHA had planned a trek to this place, it was like dream come true and i immediately joined the two day trekking program, we had our lunch at a place Basrigatte village parked our vehicles at a temple, there was a guide who was supposed to take us but some how he didn't turn up finally we found another local who agreed to guide us, later we hired a jeep and started our journey into the wild.

We had to get permission from the estate which we had to enter, we left our jeep and entered the estate, the guide took us to a natural cave which was in the thick forest the cave also had good stories evolved around it which the guide enlightened us with, we spent some time in the cave and continued our journey.

By evening we found a flat ground in-between two mountains and our guide suggested that we halt for the night there, he gave us some guidelines as to reach the top and the guide left us.

Adiga sir who was heading our team went to get permission from the estate again to use their water and halt in their area, so we had many groups which split to collect firewood one for water from estate and one to build the camp fire and some settled to watch the sunset,

Adiga sir took the initiative to cook and we had a splendid dinner.Next morning with new spirit we started to the peak of Merthi. For the next 1hour walk was fantastic with clouds and great scenery, everyone was shivering though we very having a brisk walk because of the cold wind,

finally we reached the peak & spent some time we could see unending mountain range clouds sailing over a very spectacular view, and we returned back, while returning we found a different route with help of a local boy.

On the way back we found many small waterfalls on this different route End of this trip was a little tragic as one of my friends from Mysore Anirudh fell down 20ft down our final steps to Horanadu and he had to rest for six months to recover.One more beautiful trip with some nice memories plus sort of bad moments added to my list.

Photos by-Ananth Udupi