Nelliyampathy hills eco visit

Tea and orange-garden hill station reached through forested ghat roads.

Walking routes off the Nelliyampathy plantation plateau: an evergreen-forest footpath to the bare granite of Kesavan Para, longer forest-division routes to Hill Top, Karassuri and over the ridge to Parambikulam, and a four-wheel-drive climb to Manpara and the ruined Victoria Church.

A state farm at Kaikatty growing mandarin oranges, winter vegetables and a fruit forest of fifty varieties on the Nelliyampathy plateau — the Kingdom of Cochin's Poliya estate, a farm since 1943 and an orange and vegetable farm since 1956, with a passion-fruit processing unit and a published ticket.

The name makes the claim: Seetharkundu is traditionally held to be where Rama, Lakshmana and Sita rested during the exile. It sits five kilometres by road from the Nelliyampathy settlement and about seven from Kaikatty, and looks out over the Palakkad plain a thousand metres below — which means it is worth almost nothing in cloud and a great deal on a clear morning. Check the weather before committing the drive.

A bare rock shoulder with a long view, about four and a half kilometres by road from the Nelliyampathy settlement and two from Kaikatty, reached by a short path through wet evergreen forest. It is said locally to be where Mrigaya was shot in 1989 with Mammootty, though the claim is repeated more often than it is evidenced. Para means rock, and the walk in is half the pleasure of it.

A rock shoulder on the Kaikatty-Nooradi road looking across an unbroken fold of evergreen forest to a conical peak — the nearest thing on the plateau to a viewpoint you can have to yourself.

A working plantation on the southern shoulder of the Nelliyampathy plateau with a grass-and-rock top point above it, named by Kerala Tourism as a trekking destination and reached by estate track rather than by road.