Ilaveezhapoonchira

The story of Ilaveezhapoonchira

High on the boundary of Kottayam and Idukki districts, near Melukavu and Kanjar, Ilaveezhapoonchira is one of those places that reveals itself slowly. The last stretch of road climbs through rubber and cardamom country, then the trees fall away and the land opens into bare, rolling grassland. Three green hills — Mankunnu, Kodayathoormala and Thonippara — stand around a shallow valley, and on a clear morning the whole plateau seems to float above the mist gathered in the lowlands below.

The high point sits at roughly 962 metres, about 3,200 feet above sea level, and the reward for reaching it is a genuinely enormous view. From the ridgelines, visitors are said to be able to pick out parts of as many as six neighbouring districts — Idukki, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta and Thrissur — with the sheet of the Malankara reservoir catching the light far below. On hazy days the horizon shrinks, but the drama of standing on an open grass ridge with valleys falling away on every side does not.

The name itself is the first thing most visitors ask about. Ilaveezhapoonchira is usually explained as ‘the poonchira where leaves do not fall’ — ila meaning leaf, veezha meaning to fall, and poonchira meaning a meadow-pond or floral basin. The plain reason offered locally is simple and true to the landscape: the hilltops are grassland with almost no large trees, and the constant wind sweeps the slopes clean, so there are no leaves to shed into the hollow. The more romantic explanation belongs to legend, and it is one of the reasons the place has stayed in local imagination for so long.

The other great draw is the poonchira itself. For much of the year the central basin is a green hollow, but during the south-west monsoon, roughly June to August, water gathers off the surrounding hills and pools into a shallow seasonal lake — the ‘pond’ the name promises. This is the season the meadows are at their most vivid, wrapped in cloud that can roll in even at midday, and it is also when the ground is at its most slippery and the weather at its least predictable.

Because there is so little between you and the sky here, Ilaveezhapoonchira has become a favourite with campers and photographers who come up for the sunrise and stay for the sunset. Many string it together with Vagamon and the small Kunjila Dam near Kanjar to make a highland loop through the Erattupetta highlands. Facilities on the hill are minimal — this is open meadow and cliff edge, not a built-up viewpoint — so the visit is as much about the walk, the wind and the changing light as it is about any single spot to stand.

For the approach, use Melukavu as a local orientation point: Kerala Tourism’s route directory places Ilaveezhapoonchira near Melukavu Centre. The summit pin and the place where you can leave a car are different planning questions. Ask about the final road section, the walking distance from the agreed drop-off and the return transport before committing to a sunrise departure.

The open grassland gives very little shelter when cloud or rain moves across the ridge. Plan the turnaround by daylight and visibility, rather than by how many distant districts you hope to identify. A clouded-in visit can still reveal the shape of the nearby hills, but it cannot promise the reservoir panorama shown in a clear-weather photograph. Confirm any overnight arrangement separately; a scenic meadow is not, by itself, an authorised campsite.

Legend & myth

The best-known story attached to Ilaveezhapoonchira comes from the Mahabharata and is told as legend rather than history. It holds that the Pandava brothers passed time here during their long exile in the forest, and that Draupadi (also called Panchali) would come down to bathe in the pond in the valley.

In the popular version of the tale, celestial beings tried to spy on her, and Lord Indra, king of the devas, is said to have raised the surrounding hills and heaped them with flowers to screen the pond from prying eyes — leaving the isolated, flower-fringed basin that gives the place its poetic reputation. Another strand of the legend credits Bhima with building the pond for Panchali, and speaks of an old Krishna temple on the hill said to have been founded by Panchali herself.

These are devotional and folkloric traditions, not documented events, and locals tell them as part of the area’s lore. Whichever version you hear, it captures the same idea the plain explanation does — a green, treeless bowl in the hills where leaves never gather.