Hill bagging near Bengaluru: build your summit list

Nandi Hills on a January morning. Skandagiri the month after. Then you opened a tab for Kedarnath.

That's the usual path. Do the famous two, decide you've seen what Bengaluru has to offer, and go looking further afield. But there are hills within three hours of the city that almost nobody has stood on: unnamed on most maps, unqueued on any weekend, and worth the drive. Hill bagging is how you find them.

What hill bagging is

A hill bagger works through a list. Not a bucket list, which is just things you intend to do someday. A specific, named list of summits in a defined geography, ticked off one at a time. The point is the list: having it forces you to go somewhere new.

The tradition is over a century old. In 1891, Sir Hugh Munro published a list of every Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet: 282 of them. People started climbing every one, and those who complete the full set are called Munroists. Munro himself never finished. He died in 1919 with three still to go. The Walkhighlands guide to the Munros has the full list and the logbook if you want to see how serious the tradition gets.

In England's Lake District, Alfred Wainwright spent eleven years walking 214 fells and writing handwritten guides to each one, completing all seven volumes in 1966. People now work through every fell because Wainwright described them as worth doing. The British Mountaineering Council's Wainwright guide is where to start if you want to understand the tradition.

Both traditions share the same mechanism. A list turns a hobby into a project. You finish one hill, and the next one is already waiting.

The hills around Bengaluru have everything you need to start one.

The hills near Bengaluru

Nandi Hills and Skandagiri are where most people start. The list from there is what you haven't found yet.

Naadukundu malai — Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu. A hill visible from the Bengaluru–Dharmapuri highway that most people drive past without knowing its name. Cave temple near the summit, a honeybee colony in the rocks, and no one there except on festival day.

Balakondarayana — Hosur, Tamil Nadu. The temple-topped hill you have seen from the Bengaluru–Krishnagiri highway a hundred times without stopping. From the summit at night, the highway below looks like a river of lights. Porcupine quills on the trail on the way up.

Kunagalu betta — Ramanagara, Karnataka. A moderate climb through boulders with a narrow cave passage in the middle of the route. Most people who drive to Ramanagara go to Savandurga. Kunagalu is what the list sends you to instead.

Mutturayaswamy Gudi Betta — Ramanagara, Karnataka. Short enough to finish in an hour, starting beside a small lake. Rock-cut steps up to the summit temple. A completely different kind of ascent from anything else near Ramanagara.

Four hills most people won't think to search for. The full list is longer.

Browse the full list of peaks near Bengaluru to find your next summit.

How Bengaluru Trails tracks your list

The Munros and Wainwrights created communities built around completion: logbooks, trail registers, the social recognition of someone who finished all of them. That structure didn't exist for the hills around Bengaluru. Now it does.

Bengaluru Trails has built peak bagging tracking directly into the site, and it works automatically through Strava.

Connect your Strava account from your profile page. When you do, we scan your full activity history: every trail run, hike, and walk with a GPS track, going all the way back. Each one is checked against our database of named summits around South India. If your route passed within 100 metres of a peak, it's logged as bagged, with the exact date from your Strava activity.

The badge appears on the peak's detail page: a green chip with the date you stood there. Your hiker profile shows a grid of every summit you've bagged, ordered by date climbed.

No manual logging. If you've already been on any of these hills with Strava running, the summit is already in the system the moment you connect. You may have more peaks logged than you realise.

The Munroists have a logbook kept by the Scottish Mountaineering Club. This is ours: automatic, retroactive, and specific to the hills around Bengaluru.

Common questions

What is hill bagging?

Hill bagging is the practice of working through a named list of summits, ticking each one off until the list is complete. The tradition started in Scotland after Sir Hugh Munro published his 1891 list of 282 mountains over 3,000 feet. Walkhighlands has the definitive Munro guide if you want to see how far the tradition goes.

How many peaks are there near Bengaluru?

Dozens, spread across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu within three hours of the city. Most people know Nandi Hills and Skandagiri. The ones worth discovering next include Naadukundu malai in Dharmapuri, Balakondarayana near Hosur, and Kunagalu betta and Mutturayaswamy Gudi Betta in Ramanagara. Browse the full trail listing to see what's within range.

Does Bengaluru Trails track my summits automatically?

Yes, if you connect Strava. We scan your full activity history on first connect. Any outdoor activity whose GPS track passes within 100 metres of a known peak is logged as summited, with the date from your Strava activity. Nothing to enter manually.

Do I need Strava to use this?

You need Strava for the automatic tracking. Strava records the GPS track of each activity, which is what we use to detect summits. If you don't have an account, you can start a free one and connect it from your profile page at any time. Peak pages and trail listings are open to browse without an account.

Start your list. Browse peaks near Bengaluru.