Karadipara is a shoulder of bare rock beside the Kaikatty–Nooradi road, a kilometre and a bit from the Kaikatty junction, and it is the viewpoint on this plateau that nobody stops at. What it looks out on is worth the stop: an entire fold of unbroken evergreen forest dropping away below the rock, and across it a steep conical peak standing above everything else on the ridge. There is no sign, no railing and no car park, which is precisely why it is usually empty.
The story of Karadipara
The rock itself is a tilted sheet of granite with grass and small tufted plants growing in its seams — the same bald-dome geology as Kesavan Para, which is only a few hundred metres away across the hillside, but smaller and right at the roadside. You step off the tarmac onto it. That is the whole approach.
What makes the view unusual on this range is that there is no plantation in it. From most of the plateau's viewpoints you are looking down on tea, coffee or cardamom, and the landscape reads as worked. Here the fold below the rock is filled edge to edge with wet evergreen forest, unbroken, running down into a shaded valley and up the far side to the peak, with the Palakkad plain showing pale away to the west.
The forest below is part of why the ground here is protected: this shoulder falls inside the eco-sensitive zone proposed around the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, which lies south over the ridge. What you are looking at is habitat rather than scenery, which is also why it is quiet.
Karadipara is one of the string of bare tops on the Manalaroo side of the plateau — Kesavan Para is in the same ward and reachable on the same road, and the footpaths that link the high points run through here. Doing the two together is the sensible way to spend a morning: Karadipara for the drive-up view over unbroken forest, Kesavan Para for the walk in and the bigger rock.
Read the full history of Karadipara 204 more words
History
The name is built the same way as its neighbour's: para is rock. Karadi is the bear, and a bear-rock name on a Western Ghats ridge is common enough that it tells you what the ground was rather than what happened on it. Sloth bears live in this kind of country.
This is one of the pieces of the range that was never leased and never planted. The 1889 lease of the Nelliyampathy hills opened the slopes below to coffee and then to tea and cardamom, and the high rock and the shola in the folds were left out of it. The unbroken canopy in the view is the visible result.
Why visit
A fold of unbroken evergreen forest with no plantation anywhere in the view, which is rare on this plateau.
A steep conical peak standing across the valley above the surrounding ridge line.
A roadside rock you can step onto straight from the car, 1.3 km from the Kaikatty junction.
Almost always empty, with no sign, no railing and nothing built.
Ten minutes from Kesavan Para on the same road, so the two make one short morning.
Ground inside the eco-sensitive zone proposed around the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, over the ridge to the south.
