Ranimedu is a working plantation on the southern shoulder of the Nelliyampathy plateau with a bare grass-and-rock top above it, and it is named by Kerala Tourism as a place to trek. What is up there is not a viewpoint in the built sense — no railing, no car park, no sign — but a rock shelf in tall grass with shola trees along the ridge behind and, on a good morning, a valley full of cloud below with the far peaks standing out of it like islands.
The story of Ranimedu
The top is reached by estate track rather than by road, and the way people generally get up is on foot or on a bicycle: one of the few photographs taken there shows a mountain bike laid down on the rock with a helmet and gloves beside it, which is a fair description of the effort involved. It is about three and a half kilometres from the Nelliyampathy settlement but eight or nine minutes of it rather than four, because of what the surface is.
The character of the ground changes as you climb out of the estate. Below, it is planted and tended; above, the grass comes up past waist height, seed heads and all, and the rock breaks through it in shelves. The shola trees hold the ridge line in a dark band. It is the shola-grassland mosaic of the high Western Ghats, which on this range is what the land does above about a thousand metres wherever it was never cleared.
The view is the reason to go and it is a different one from the plateau's western viewpoints. Instead of the plain, you are looking over ridge after forested ridge with cloud lying in the folds between them, and on a clear early morning a distant peak standing above a flat sea of cloud on the horizon. Late morning fills it all in.
There are places to stay on the estate itself, which is unusual up here — two of the plateau's businesses give a Ranimedu Estate address at Pulayanpara, and they are the practical way to be on this side of the hill at first light rather than driving out to it.
Read the full history of Ranimedu 211 more words
History
The estate is part of the belt of plantations opened on these hills after the 1889 lease, when the slopes were cut out of the forest for coffee and later for tea and cardamom, and the high rock and grass above the planting line were left alone. That division — planted below, open above — is still exactly what you walk through on the way up.
Medu means a raised place or a mound, and rani is queen. The hills belonged to the Vengunad Kovilakam of Kollengode before the leases, and estate names on this range carry that older ownership in them more often than they carry anything about the planters.
Why visit
A grass-and-rock top with shola along the ridge, reached by estate track rather than by road.
Cloud lying in the valleys with the far peaks standing above it on a clear early morning.
A view over forested ridges rather than over the plain, which is the opposite of what the plateau's better-known viewpoints show you.
Named by Kerala Tourism as a trekking destination on the Nelliyampathy hills.
Estate stays on the ground itself, so you can be up there at first light instead of driving to it.
Waist-high grassland and bare rock shelves — the shola-grassland mosaic at close quarters.
